A Reference Grammar of Russian 9780521772921, 9780511164460, 0511164467, 0521772923

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A Reference Grammar of Russian A Reference Grammar of Russian describes and systematizes all aspects of the grammar of Russian: the patterns of orthography, sounds, inflection, syntax, tense-aspect-mood, word order, and intonation. It is especially concerned with the meaning of combinations of words (constructions). The core concept is that of the predicate history: a record of the states of entities through time and across possibilities. Using predicate histories, the book presents an integrated account of the semantics of verbs, nouns, case, and aspect. More attention is paid to syntax than in any other grammars of Russian written in English or in other languages of Western Europe. Alan Timberlake refers to the literature on variation and trends in development, and makes use of contemporary data from the internet. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and language professionals interested in Russian. a l a n t i m b e r l a k e is Professor of Slavic Linguistics at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of The Nominative Object in Slavic, Baltic, and West Finnic (1974) and editor of The Scope of Slavic Aspect (with M. S. Flier, 1985), American Contributions to the Eleventh International Congress of Slavists (with Robert A. Maguire, 1993), and American Contributions to the Twelfth International Congress of Slavists (with Robert Maguire, 1998).

A Reference Grammar of Russian ALAN TIMBERLAKE University of California at Berkeley

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521772921 © Alan Timberlake 2004 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2004 isbn-13 isbn-10

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Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

1 Russian

1

2 Sounds

28

3 Inflectional morphology 4 Arguments

92

159

5 Predicates and arguments 6 Mood, tense, and aspect

270 371

7 The presentation of information Bibliography Index 493

444

473

v

1 Russian 1.1 The Russian language 1.1.1 Russian then and now The present study is a comprehensive description of all aspects (except word derivation) of modern standard Russian: its sounds, spelling, grammar, and syntax. Russian has resulted from a long evolution that can be traced back to the first millennium of our era. From the fifth century on, speakers of Slavic established settlements over a vast area of Central and Eastern Europe, from the Danube in the south to the Elbe in the northwest. In the east, they moved north from the Dnepr valley to the Gulf of Finland and the Upper Volga, gradually displacing or assimilating the previous Baltic and Finnic inhabitants.1 Russian developed from the dialects of Slavic spoken in the north of this East Slavic territory. In the ninth century, the East Slavic area came under control of Scandinavian merchant-warriors. The Christianization of this land in 988 was followed by subjugation to “the Mongol yoke” from the thirteenth century into the fifteenth century. As the favored agent of the Golden Horde, the once small principality of Moscow brought ever more land under its control. By the end of the fifteenth century, when the Mongol yoke was definitively removed, Moscow had become the political and ecclesiastical center of the East Slavic lands, and the center of the Russian language area. Russian is not only a spoken language, but a written language used for all cultural purposes. The modern form of Russian took shape over the course of the eighteenth century. The morphology and phonology is based on the dialect of Moscow. In its vocabulary, syntax, and rhetoric, Russian, while relying on native Slavic elements, has a long history of adapting and internalizing foreign -Byzantine, French, and most recently English -- models. Parenthetically, it could be noted that the modern word héccrbq ‘Russian’ is an adjective deriving from the noun Hécm ‘Rus’. According to a venerable etymology, 1

See Sedov 1982 on the complex archeological record of the East Slavic area.

1

2

A Reference Grammar of Russian

Hécm was a descriptive name for Scandinavians that is based on the Germanic etymon ‘to row’, the Scandinavians being above all oarsmen.2 In East Slavic lands, Hécm was used initially for the Scandinavian overlords and their principality of Kiev. Over time it was extended to all East Slavic lands. Muscovy appropriated the name for its political identity, culture, and language as it consolidated power. Russian is the first language of approximately 150 million people. According to an estimate for 2002 the Russian Federation had a total population of 145 million people, among whom 81.5 percent, or 118 million, were ethnic Russians.3 In the mid-nineties, there were an additional 25 million Russians in the newly independent countries that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union (Novaia Rossiia 1994). Together that would make 143 million ethnic Russians. To that figure could be added a substantial though indeterminate percentage of the remaining 27 million members of other nationalities residing in the Russian Federation. According to recent statistics, the rate of population growth in the Russian Federation is negative (−0.33%), from which it would follow that the number of speakers of Russian will not increase in the foreseeable future.

1.1.2 Levels of language Russian is a spoken language and a written language. In its written form Russian has long been highly codified: grammars, dictionaries, and manuals define standards for usage that are enforced in the educational system and through editorial practices in publication. Although the Russian tradition is quite clear about what usage counts as standard, it does acknowledge the existence of a range of varieties, or registers, from archaic to bookish to standard (normative) to colloquial (hfpujdjhyfz htxm) to substandard and uncultured (ghjcnjhtxbt). The grammar recorded here is the normative grammar of standard, written Russian, which is the culturally privileged, and also the most accessible, form of Russian. Occasionally, there are asides on usage in less-than-standard or oral language, but this study cannot treat colloquial Russian with the same attention as the works of E. A. Zemskaia and colleagues,4 which have documented the significant differences between spontaneous spoken Russian and formal, written Russian. 2

3 4

Possible candidates are Roþ er, Roþ in, former names for Sweden’s Uppland region, and roþ s- ‘oar’, the genitive form used in compounding (Thomsen 1879:99--104, also Vasmer 1986--87:s.v. Hecm, de Vries 1962: s.v. rj´ð r, Schenker 1995:57--60). A form of this etymon was adopted into West Finnic languages (Finnish ruotsi ‘Sweden’) and into Slavic, and then found its way into Greek (


ς ) and Arabic (r¯ us) sources from the ninth and tenth centuries. At: http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html#People. Zemskaia 1973, 1978, 1983; Zemskaia and Shmelev 1984; see also Timroth 1986.

Russian

Russian has undergone some change since the political and economic turmoil of the late eighties and early nineties, but it is difficult to assess how much. Most tangibly, there have been changes in vocabulary.5 Borrowing and native derivational processes have produced many new words and word combinations, leading to macaronic texts: ytqk-fhn ‘nail-art’, WEB-lbpfqy ‘WEB-design’, Htrbq ,bhvbyutvcrbq lb-l;tq gj bvtyb Graham Mack lb-l;tbk ct,t, lb-l;tbk, lf nfr b ljlbl;tbkcz, xnj c hflbj eitk ‘A certain Birmingham DJ, named Graham Mack, DJ-ed, DJ-ed, and so DJ-ed out, that he had to leave the radio station’. This internationalized vocabulary now dominates the linguistic landscape, just as Soviet-speak used to dominate language a half century ago. Along with these changes in vocabulary has come a less quantifiable but still palpable change in the mores of language. Unedited, informal texts of written Russian of a type that would never have become public during the days of active Soviet censorship are now available in print and especially electronic form. And yet, despite political changes and a loosening of speech manners, contemporary Russian in its grammatical structure remains Russian.

1.2 Describing Russian grammar 1.2.1 Conventions of notation The notational conventions employed here are those of Table 1.1. In the body of the text, Cyrillic words and phrases will be given in italics, and English translations in single quotation marks. Stress is marked in citation forms of words or short phrases; stress is not marked on vowels in fragments of text cited in the text or in set-off numbered examples. In numbered examples, italics and quotations are not used.

1.2.2 Abbreviations The abbreviations used in this study are listed in Table 1.2.

1.2.3 Dictionaries and grammars The definitive dictionary of Russian in Russian is the Slovar
sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo iazyka, a seventeen-volume dictionary published over 1950--65. Selfevidently it does not include the numerous new words from the last several decades. Shorter Russian-language dictionaries are fully useful, notably Ozhegov’s one-volume classic, which conveniently lists grammatical forms with stress. More than adequate bilingual dictionaries are the Oxford dictionary (both directions) and now the Novyi Slovar
(Russian to English), the most up-to-date 5

Zemskaia 2000.

3

4

A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 1.1 Conventions used notation

interpretation

nom sg ntnhƒlm ntnhƒlm lj

grammatical gloss and Russian word alternative grammatical gloss of Russian word grammatical form conditioned by another word (preposition or verb) spelling of letter (or word) in Cyrillic, when spelling is at issue sound (from narrow phonetic through broad phonetic to phonemic) vowel series, or set of stressed and unstressed vowels related by etymology and/or synchronic alternation morphological unit any relation of elements, notably two stems of verbs, {CVC-a- : CVC-aj-|e|-} } two forms potentially available in the same context aspect pair: perfective and secondary (derived) imperfective aspect pair: simplex imperfective and semelfactive perfective aspect pair: simplex imperfective and prefixed perfective

≤=≥ [ƒ] {ƒ} or {ƒ : ø : ə} {-ej} or -tq {X : Y} X∼Y jcnƒnmcz/jcnfdƒnmcz vf[ƒnm\vf[yénm (gj)ghjc∫nm or ghjc∫nm\gjghjc∫nm √ /±/?/∗

hierarchy of acceptability judgments: neutral, acceptable, frequent / less preferred option / restricted, marginal / dubious, ungrammatical

dictionary available. A selection of dictionaries -- Russian only and bilingual -- is available on the web. Russian dictionaries, unlike many dictionaries of English, do not give information about etymology, for which one should consult the dictionary of Max Vasmer (in its original German edition of 1953 or the Russian edition of 1986--87 revised by O. N. Trubachev), nor about earlier usage, for which one should use Srevnevskii’s “materials” for a dictionary of Old Russian from 1893--1912 (and later reprints), Slovar
russkogo iazyka XI--XVII vv., or Slovar
russkogo iazyka XVIII veka. Lubensky (1995) should be consulted for Russian idioms. For grammatical information, the “grammatical dictionary” of A. A. Zalizniak (1977[a]), with 100,000 entries arranged in reverse alphabetical order, is definitive. Entries of the dictionary are indexed with paradigm numbers; exceptions are marked. The 142 introductory pages list paradigms with accentual contours. A variety of grammars is available, including two compact grammars in English (Unbegaun 1957, Wade 1992), which, however, do not treat syntax extensively, as well as the multiple generations of “academy grammars” (for example,

Russian

Table 1.2 Abbreviations used abbreviation

interpretation

C / C/ / R / W C ¸ / C0 V / V! / V* P / T / K / ˇS
C 0 / C j / C i / C i / C i / C i
[z˛ ] / [rü] / [r3] [´a5] / [´a5] / [´a55] rrü ˇ

set of consonants / obstruents / sonorants / {[v v˛ ]} set of palatalized consonants / set of non-palatalized consonants set of vowels / stressed vowels / unstressed vowels consonant articulations: labial / dental / velar / alveo-palatal consonant grades (§2.5.2) palatalized [z] / voiceless [r] / voiced [r] [a] fronted in initial transition / final transition / both transitions articulation in which one feature changes over duration of segment nominative / accusative / genitive / dative / locative / instrumental

nom / acc / gen / dat / loc / ins gen1 / gen2 // loc1 / loc2 nom=acc / acc=gen sg / pl / du msc / fem / nt an / in pv nn / qu / adj / pss Declension Declension Declension Declension Declension Declension Declension Declension R / E /A /F /T /M prs / pst / fut / inf / imv / irr / rls / pcl / dee / psv if / pf // dt / id 1sg / 1pl / 2sg / 2pl / 3sg / 3pl dim intg /B/ ↔ / B ↔B / ↔B У /И /О /Ф jyf v dpzkf o vtyz d yf ,fpfh m ,kfujgjkexyj

s

primary / secondary genitive // primary / secondary locative syncretism of nominative and accusative (“inanimate accusative”) / syncretism of accusative and genitive (“animate accusative”) singular / plural / dual masculine / feminine / neuter animate / inanimate predicative (= “short”) adjective noun / quantifier / adjective / possessive first declension: Declension and Declension first declension (masculine type with nom sg {-∅ }: ,j´,) first declension (neuter type with nom sg {-o -e}: cnƒlj) second declension third declension third declension (feminine with nom sg {-∅}: gkj´oflm) third declension (neuter with nom sg -z: dh†vz) third declension (masculine with nom sg {-∅}: génm ) stress paradigms -- stress on: root / ending / classificatory suffix (verbs) / antethematic syllable / thematic syllable / mobile stress present / past / future / infinitive / imperative / irrealis / realis / participle / adverbial participle (lttghbxfcnbt) / passive participle imperfective / perfective // determinate (imperfective) / indeterminate first-person singular / first-person plural / second-person singular / second-person plural / third-person singular / third-person plural diminutive interrogative address by ns / address by ds / mutual address by ns / mutual address by ds / asymmetric address, one speaker using ns, the other ds / diminutive name / first name / patronymic / surname word order: subject verb object domain manner

5

6

A Reference Grammar of Russian

RG 1980). The four-volume “functional grammar” is superb (Bondarko 1991--96). Good grammars exist in other European languages (for example, Garde 1980 in French, Isaˇcenko 1975 in German). The discussion below, though it is informed by this tradition of grammatical analysis, does not cite them in the interests of avoiding a clutter of references.

1.2.4 Statistics and corpora To characterize how likely some construction is, it is often useful to cite statistics of usage. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge the limitations on statistical statements. The likelihood of using some or another morphological form or syntactic construction is really the likelihood of using the context in which the form or construction is appropriate; statistics ultimately measure how likely people are to say a whole context. For example, if we find that the combination e ytq is less frequent than e ytt, what we have really found is that the contexts in which e ytq is appropriate occur less frequently than those in which e ytt is appropriate. Any statistical statement, even one that appears to deal with morphological variants, is a measure of the frequency of the contexts in which these variants are appropriate. When the discussion below cites statistical observations, it is usually to say, informally and without pretense of scientific rigor, that a certain construction occurs surprisingly often or not particularly often, relative to what one might expect. The limitations on what statistical statements mean should always be kept in mind. As a corpus for making statistical observations, I initially used the “Uppsala Corpus.” The corpus, assembled by the Slavic Institute of Uppsala University and mounted on the web by the University of T¨ ubingen,6 offers a balanced selection of styles of texts through the 1980s; it has its own search. As time went on, I made use of the broader resources of the web. The address “http://www.lib.ru/” has a vastly larger number of (belletristic) texts. By using a powerful search engine (such as Google, Zndex, or Rambler), it is possible to search this site or the whole web for words or phrases, and produce quantities of Russian larger by orders of magnitude than the Uppsala Corpus. For example, in the Uppsala Corpus, the target ins sg nsczxtq produced no tokens, the target e ytq five tokens. In contrast, a search of http://www.lib.ru/ (with Google, ) produced 233 hits for nsczxtq and 796 for e ytq; and on the whole web (with Google, ), there were 8,790 hits for nsczxtq and 25,900 for e ytq. The new electronic resources, then, offer the possibility of vast quantities of Russian, most of it very contemporary. 6

At: http://www.sfb441.uni-tuebingen.de/b1/korpora.html. The description () states that the corpus is based on 600 Russian texts, one million running words, of informative (late 1980s) and literary texts (1960--88).

Russian

There are, however, some negatives, which grow in proportion to the size of the corpus and the frequency of the target word or phrase. Unlike the Uppsala Corpus, which was designed to serve as a corpus and has a balanced selection of genres of texts, the web was not designed to serve as a corpus for linguistic investigation. The web has properties that make it less than ideal as a corpus: (a) the relative weight of genres -- www.libr.ru is heavy on literary texts and translations (if one has hesitations about translations), while the web as a whole has a random mix of commercial writing, personal travelogues, detailed histories of the repair records of automobiles, journalism, and religious texts; (b) the quality of Russian, which includes translations, sites from outside Russia, and informal personal writing and commercial writing that is no longer subjected to the same editing as was Russian printed in the Soviet era; (c) the fact that many of the texts show up on more than one site, undercutting the value of statistical observations; (d) instability -- the sites are not stable over time, impeding replication and verifiability; (e) the number of positive hits, which can be so large that the finite amount of time it takes to evaluate any token makes it difficult to examine all the data. The enormous volume of Russian available now is a mixed blessing.7 Allow me to cite cautionary tales. With respect to repetition: the phrase e;t jnrhsdfk jryj ‘[he] already opened the window’ -- a familiar phrase in aspectology -- gave a modest forty hits on the whole web (). But every one of them was the same sentence from a text by A. Tolstoy. With respect to stability, I searched the web for the expressions hfymit ytuj ‘earlier than him’ and d jnyjitybb ytuj ‘in relation to it’, and came up with 1,590 and 5,490 tokens, respectively (). The same search nine months later () yielded 2,080 and 7,190 tokens -- an increase of 17 percent. With respect to quantity: I searched the web () for tokens of nsczxtq -- 8,790 hits -- and nsczxm/ -- 10,800 hits -- with the goal of finding out in crude terms the relative frequency of these two forms of the instrumental case of nsczxf. It would take perhaps eighty hours to evaluate all that data, if a modest fifteen seconds were devoted to each token. In short, the investigator has no control over the web and no way of determining what its properties as a corpus really are. The Uppsala Corpus, though smaller, offers a more balanced corpus. In light of such difficulties, it is important to emphasize the limitations on citations from the web. All statistical statements made on the basis of the web should be taken for what they are: informal characterizations of frequency over unstable, often repetitive, collections of Russian assembled for other (commercial, etc.) purposes than to serve as a corpus for linguistic investigation. The corpus is not stable and one cannot control for repetition. 7

Browne 2001 explores the problems of using the web as a corpus.

7

8

A Reference Grammar of Russian

In the same vein, it is also important to register the disclaimer that there is no guarantee that specific websites, referred to occasionally below, will remain valid.

1.2.5 Strategies of describing Russian grammar The discussion of Russian below follows an unsurprising sequence: after these preliminaries, ending with the writing of Russian, the discussion goes from sound to morphology (grammar in the traditional sense) to syntax -- first arguments, then predicates, then predicates in context (tense, aspect, modality) -and finally, selected discourse operations that apply to the presentation of information. Obviously there are many topics that belong in two places -- tense in participles is a question of morphology and of predicate semantics in context; the second genitive is a question of morphology, of arguments, and of predicates (since the use of the second genitive depends on the syntactic context) -- and it was necessary to make decisions about where to put discussion. Cross-references are provided. A word about the philosophy of grammar invoked here. Modern linguistics has prided itself on identifying basic, primitive elements (phonemes, morphemes, constituents of sentences) and their rules of combination. For some researchers, the ultimate goal is to characterize which sentences are possible, which impossible, and to state the rules of combination. My experience in assembling this grammar has led in a different direction. Repeatedly I found that what was significant was the construction -- the pattern, the configuration, the template (nhfafhtn8 ). Patterns include all manner of linguistic knowledge: constituent elements; typical lexical items that participate; strategies of interpreting the meaning, or value, of the pattern in discourse; stylistic value -- in short, patterns include all kinds of linguistic knowledge. The semantic, pragmatic, and stylistic values of a construction are not entirely predictable from its primitive elements and rules of combination, and though any construction certainly contains smaller entities, it is not always possible (or important) to identify the primitive elements. It becomes more important to say in what contexts, and with what meaning, a construction can be used. The whole is often greater than its parts. For example, the free (dative) infinitive construction (yfv yt vbyjdfnm ub,tkb ‘it is not for us to avoid disaster’, ,tp htdjk/wbb yfv yt lj,bnmcz cjdthitycndf ‘without a revolution it is not for us to achieve perfection’) has recognizable parts: an infinitive, a dative that would be the subject if the infinitive were a finite verb, and the other argument phrases governed by the verb. There is no overt finite verb; no form of ,ßnm ‘be’ is used in the 8

Zhivov and Timberlake 1997.

Russian

present tense. The meaning of this construction -- it makes a prediction about the possibility of an imagined event -- cannot be computed just from its constituent parts, the dative and the infinitive. Moreover, the construction has different variants, each of which has a specific stylistic value. The variant just illustrated is folksy, apodictic. Another variant of the construction used in content questions is neutral and productive, as in, Rfr gjgfcnm d yfxfkj cgbcrf yfqltyys[ cfqnjd yf gjbcrjds[ vfibyf[? ‘How [is it possible] to get to the beginning of the list of sites in search engines?’ Indeed, the initial portion of this question, Rfr gjgfcnm . . . ‘how [is it possible] to reach . . .’, produced 18,900 hits on the whole web (). In general, then, the presentation of Russian grammar below emphasizes whole combinations and their value (including stylistic), downplaying the task of identifying primitive elements or articulating notations for encoding rules of combination. When there are two closely related constructions that differ by one linguistic form -- for example, relatives made with rnj´ vs. rjnj´hsq, genitive vs. accusative with negated verbs, etc. -- it is an interesting question how speakers choose between the variants. In a notational approach to grammar, one can always create different structures that will produce different cases (for example). But because the structures will be distinct, there is no way of comparing the properties that distinguish them -- the properties of the noun phrases, the discourse import -and such an approach says nothing about how speakers make choices. As an alternative, one can look for as many tangible variables as possible -- variables such as the number of a noun, its position relative to the verb, the aspect of the verb -- and measure their statistical contribution. But the result of a variable rule is only a probability, which does not explain how a speaker works with a half dozen to a dozen factors and makes a choice that is binary -- to use one construction or another. In the following, I assume that speakers operate with templates (constructions) that have multiple properties -- lexical to syntactic to discourse. In any instance, speakers ask which template a given utterance better matches. This is a holistic decision: in the genitive of negation, perhaps, speakers evaluate a context as being concerned with absence of a situation (genitive) as opposed to reporting an entity’s properties (accusative). To get to this holistic judgment, speakers ask which template better fits the context. And to answer that question, speakers probably have to select one feature to pay attention to, while others are ignored. In practical terms, this means it is difficult, for many constructions, to give watertight rules about usage (there are too many variables; speakers have some freedom in how they rank and evaluate variables). What can be done is to point out the general, holistic value of a construction, and, often, some tangible linguistic features that are consistent with that holistic value that will influence choices.

9

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

1.2.6 Two fundamental concepts of (Russian) grammar While each construction, each problem of grammar, requires its own description, some general, recurrent ideas emerged. Two can be mentioned. One is modality and the related concept of quantification. Every statement is understood against alternatives. Sometimes there is just a contrast of the mere fact that some x having one salient property exists at all, in contrast to the possibility that x might not hold, or that a certain situation  holds in contrast to the possibility that  might not exist (existential or essential quantification). Sometimes a specific individual x or property  is contrasted with other possible x’s or ’s (individuated quantification). Modality -- consideration of alternatives by an authority -- pervades grammar. The other is directionality, dialogicity. An utterance does not exist or have meaning in isolation, but is manipulated by speakers and addressees in a threestep process. The speaker invites the addressee to construct a background of information, taken as given and known (first step). Against this background the speaker formulates, and the addressee evaluates, the current assertion (second step). On the basis of that comparison, the speaker and addressee then project further conclusions or anticipate further events (third step). Thus the speaker invites the addressee to engage in a directional process of manipulating information. These concepts -- modality (and quantification) and directionality -- pervade the grammar of Russian and, no doubt, other languages.

1.3 Writing Russian 1.3.1 The Russian Cyrillic alphabet Russian is written not in the Latin letters used for English and Western European languages but in an alphabet called Cyrillic (Russian rbhbkkbwf). Cyrillic, with small differences, is also used for other languages -- Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian. Cyrillic will be used to write Russian throughout the discussion below, with certain obvious exceptions: in the discussion of sounds and the internal structure of words, in glosses of Russian words or phrases, and in citations of scholarly literature. For reference, the version of the Cyrillic alphabet used for modern Russian is given in Table 1.3. In Column 1 the alphabet is presented in the lower- and uppercase forms used in printing. Column 2 gives the italic variants. Column 3 gives longhand forms of lowercase and then uppercase letters as used in connected, cursive writing (unusual uppercase letters are omitted); the subsequent discussion, however, will not treat handwriting.9 The contemporary 9

With thanks to Victoria Somoff for the handwriting sample.

Russian

name of the letter is given in Column 4. These names are mostly transparent. The names of consonant letters have a vowel added to the sound of the consonant. Four unusual letters are referred to by descriptive phrases. For reference, Column 5 gives the older names of the letters. Column 6 states approximate sound values of individual Cyrillic letters in English, although there are obvious difficulties in attempting to state the sound of Cyrillic letters in terms of English sounds: the closest English sound is not always particularly close; individual Cyrillic letters do not represent just a single sound (consonants can be palatalized or not; vowel letters have different value depending on whether or not they follow consonant letters). The statements of sound value are quite approximate. Because Cyrillic is an alphabet, by establishing correspondences between each individual Cyrillic letter and one or more Latin letters, it is possible to rewrite, or transliterate, Cyrillic into Latin letters. Column 7 is the table of equivalences established by the Library of Congress as used in slightly simplified form in this study. (Other systems are discussed later: §1.3.7.) The final column gives sources of the Cyrillic letters. The alphabet given in Table 1.3 is the contemporary alphabet. The civil alphabet used until the reform of the October Revolution included two additional letters: ≤î≥ “b ltcznthbxyjt” (alphabetized between ≤b≥ and ≤r≥) and ≤˜≥ “znm” (between ≤m≥ and ≤э≥). Additional letters are found in Russian Church Slavic.10 From various people, one often hears that Russian must be a difficult language because its alphabet is so difficult. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whatever the difficulties of Russian, they cannot be blamed on the alphabet, which anyone with a modicum of ability in language systems and a vague acquaintance with the Greek alphabet can learn in half an hour, as will be demonstrated after a brief introduction to the history of the alphabet.

1.3.2 A brief history of the Cyrillic alphabet The beginning of writing in Slavic is a fascinating tale that deserves to be told in brief.11 The story can be picked up at the end of the eighth century, around 796, when tribes of Slavs from the region of Moravia (in the south of the contemporary Czech Republic, along the Morava River) helped Charlemagne rid Central Europe of the last remnants of the Avars, a confederation of Eastern marauders. This venture marked the beginning of more active relations between Moravian Slavs and the West, both with secular political authorities (Charlemagne until his death in 917, his descendants thereafter) and with ecclesiastical 10 11

Library of Congress Romanization: ≤î≥ > ≤¯ı≥, ≤˜≥ > ≤ıˇ e≥. Russian Church Slavic used also ≤º≥ > ≤˙f≥, ≤v≥ > ≤˙y≥ Dvornik 1970, Vlasto 1970.

11

p/P

b/B

q/Q

r/R

k/K

v/V

y/Y

j/J

g/G

h/H

c/C

b/B

q/æ

r/R

k/K

v/V

y/Y

j/J

g/G

h/H

c/C

k/lb vsckbnt yfi jy gjrjq hws ckjdj

эkm эv эy j gэ эh эc

p

pot

sew

s

r

o

go | only

rot

n

m

l

no

Masha

Leeds

k

car

rfrj

rf

i

boy

--

b rhfnrjt

i

beat | eat

z

e

Pierre | yell

zoo

d

do

b

ptvkz

g

guard

e

v

Volga

zh

b

bother

azure, French je

a

Masha | all

Fyodor | yoyo

Library of Congress Romanization

English equivalent (very approximate)

b

pэ

;bdbnt

p/P

--

=/+

;/:

=/+

;/:

;э

t/T = [åj]

l/L

l/L

ukfujk

uэ

tcnm

u/U

u/U

dtlb

dэ

t [åt]

d/D

d/D

,erb

,э

fp

archaic letter name

t/T

,/
[˝!] b VR ≥ VZ ≥ VS ≥ VD ≥ VT c V# ≥ VCV ≥ VCR(V) ≥ VCC(V)

Stressed vowels differ in their intrinsic duration, in proportion to the degree of aperture (acoustically, F1 ) ([1](a)). The most open, [ƒ], is the longest (about 200 milliseconds under stress). [Ó] is slightly longer than [†] and [u]⁄ (duration around 155 ms.); [í] is shorter yet (140 ms.) and [˝!] the shortest of all (120 ms.).10 Unstressed vowels are appreciably shorter. The duration of vowels varies depending on the adjacent consonants, particularly the consonants that follow the vowel. L. V. Shcherba (1912:126ff.) was able to document the effect of a number of factors. Before single consonants in the first, stressed, syllable of disyllabic words, vowels are shortest before voiceless stops (gƒgf ‘father’), a little longer before voiced stops (hƒlf ‘glad’), longer still before voiceless fricatives (hƒcf ‘race’), and the longest before voiced fricatives (gen sg hƒpf ‘time’); each successive difference along this hierarchy was on the order of 10 ms. for [ƒ] in slow speech. The motivation for these differences may be that absence of voicing requires an energetic gesture of opening the glottis, and making a complete closure requires more energetic gestures than producing fricatives.11 As in [1](c), vowels were found to be shorter before clusters of obstruents (gƒcnf ‘paste’) than before single consonants (gƒlfk ‘he fell’); however, a cluster composed of obstruent plus sonorant (gen sg gƒhyz ‘fellow’) allows almost the same duration in preceding vowels as singleton obstruents. Vowels are longer when no consonant follows than when a consonant follows, and longer when no consonant precedes. These constraints on duration ([1]), familiar from other languages, suggest the principle that consonants have negative valence: increasing complexity of consonant articulation removes duration from vowels.12

2.2.4 Unstressed vowels Above all, the duration of vowels depends on stress. If one compares the vowel that appears after hard consonants for orthographic ≤f≥ and ≤j≥ to stressed [ƒ], the differences are striking. If stressed [ƒ] has a duration on the order of 200 ms., the [] that appears in the first pretonic syllable is only half that, while the [´] that appears in other unstressed positions is shorter yet, on the order of 80 ms. or less.13 10 11 12 13

Matusevich 1976, who does not indicate what kind of syllables were used in the measurements. See de Jong 1991 on stops and fricatives, Kniazev 1989 on voicing. On variation in duration, see Bondarko, Verbitskaia, and Zinder 1960. Matusevich 1976:100--1.

Sounds

Because unstressed vowels are shorter than stressed vowels, there is less time for the tongue to reach the articulatory positions of stressed vowels. Thus a great proportion of the duration of unstressed vowels is spent in transition to adjacent consonants. Unstressed vowels do not reach the articulatory extremes of stressed vowels. They are neither as high nor as low, and neither as far front nor as far back as stressed vowels. Acoustically the centralization of unstressed vowels shows up as less extreme values for both F1 (reflecting vowel height) and F2 (reflecting frontness vs. backness).14 The set of unstressed vowels occupies a smaller portion of the vowel space than the set of stressed vowels. As an indirect consequence of the reduced size of the vowel space, unstressed vowels tend to merge. “Vowel reduction,” then, means a reduction in the duration of unstressed vowels, and as a consequence, a reduced vowel space, and ultimately a reduced number of distinctions made among unstressed vowels.15 Since vowels merge in unstressed position, it is something of a fiction to assert that a given unstressed vowel derives from [ƒ] or [o]⁄ or [†]: once a vowel is unstressed, and has been for at least five hundred years, in what sense is it derived from [ƒ] or [†]?16 We rely on various kinds of indirect evidence such as etymology, orthography, and related word forms. The fiction, however, is unavoidable. In the following, stressed vowels and the unstressed vowels that derive from them historically are written in curly braces as a set of vowels, termed a s e r i e s . There are three basic positions: stressed, unstressed position after hard consonant, and unstressed after soft consonant. (Sometimes it is necessary to add a fourth position, position after hard immutable consonant ˇSo = [s ‹ z].) ‹ In this way, for example, the series of vowels that includes stressed [ƒ] would be {ƒ Co C ¸ ì} or, more simply, {ƒ  ì}. As a shorthand for the whole, we can generally write simply {a} and refer to the set as the series {a}, meaning stressed [ƒ] with its variants and the unstressed vowels that are related to stressed [ƒ] in orthography, in other word forms, by etymology. It is conventional to distinguish two degrees of reduction, defined by position relative to stress. F i r s t d e g r e e o f r e d u c t i o n -- a milder degree of reduction -- occurs in the first pretonic syllable and in word-initial position 14 15

16

Bondarko 1977:111ff. The relationship is not deterministic. Different dialect systems of Russian have different phonetic implementations of vowels and different mergers, showing that reducing the phonetic space does not lead automatically to a unique pattern of mergers. Most models inevitably ascribe some primacy to the stressed vowel, and treat the unstressed vowel as derivative. The suggestion here is that speakers learn unstressed vowels as part of a word form, no less than they learn the identity of a stressed vowel. For example, ptvkz´ ‘land’ is learned as [z˛ ì] with its unstressed vowel in place. Support for the autonomy of unstressed vowels can be seen in the fact that they can be manipulated analogically (§2.2.6). Certain analogies of stressed vowels evidently rely on an identity of unstressed vowels: unstressed [ì] in ctré ‘I cut’, analogous to [ì] in ytcé ‘I carry’, motivates stressed c=r, analogous to y=c.

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

(when there is no preceding consonant to cut into the duration of the vowel). Vowels not in first pretonic position (and adjacent to consonants) -- in second or more pretonic or in post-tonic position -- are subject to more extreme, or s e c o n d - d e g r e e , reduction. There may be slight differences among seconddegree contexts -- post-tonic vowels are perhaps longer (though less loud) than pretonic vowels two syllables from the stress17 -- but these are fine details ignored in transcription. Series {i u}: Vowels of series {i u} are affected in a less obvious fashion than other vowels. Not all transcriptions write symbols for unstressed, reduced high vowels distinct from the stressed vowel letters (Avanesov does not).18 One might use small caps [i i- υ] or, as here, (modified) Greek letters: [ì ï √].19 No sources distinguish between first and second degrees of reduction among high vowels. In non-allegro style, the rounding of {u} is preserved in unstressed [√] (gen sg gen∫ [p√t˛í] ‘journey’), and the backing of {i} is still audible in unstressed [ï] (fem pst ,skƒ [bïlƒ] ‘she was’). Series {e a (o)} after soft consonants: After palatalized consonants, series {e} and {a} fall together. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the resulting unstressed vowel was pronounced with ekan
e, that is, as a mid vowel or an upper mid vowel with [e]-coloring, transcribed [bt ] in Cyrillic, [ìε ] in Latin. In the twentieth century, the vowel has merged with the slightly reduced vowel of series {í}: thus the first-pretonic vowels of ,bk´tn ‘ticket’ [b˛ ìl˛e5t] ⁄ and [b˛ ìl˛e55⁄t˛] ,tk´tnm ‘become white’ are now identical. This complete merger of vowels from the non-high series {e a} with {i} is termed ikan
e. Ikan
e begins to be acknowledged as an acceptable pronunciation around the transition from the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1912 the Leningrad phonetician L. V. Shcherba (1880--1944) described a generational split: his mother distinguished fem pst vtkƒ ‘she swept’ from pv fem vbkƒ ‘pleasant’, presumably [m˛ìε lƒ] vs. [m˛ìlƒ], while he merged them, presumably [m˛ìlƒ]. At the same time, R. Koˇsuti´c (1919:39) recommended ekan
e, but conceded that “all the young people” use ikan
e. Ekan
e was still the pronunciation that R. I. Avanesov (1972:66) recommended as recently as the last half of the twentieth century. However, sources after Avanesov treat ekan
e as conservative and outmoded, and assume that there is no longer any distinction among vowels in the position after palatalized consonants. 17 18 19

Bondarko 1977:156. Now SRIa 1 uses [bэ ] for unstressed {i} and {e a} after soft consonants. Also approximately as in Jones and Ward 1969.

Sounds

If one posits {o} as the series vowel where ∗ e changed to ∗ o under stress -- for example, if {o} is said to be the vowel not only in y=c [n˛ o5s] ⁄ ‘he carried’ but also in ytckƒ [n˛ ìslƒ] ‘she carried’ -- then one could say that series {o} is merged with series {a} and {e} and ultimately series {i} after soft consonants. Series {a o} after hard consonants: Unstressed vowels belonging to series {a} or {o} -- that is, unstressed vowels spelled with the hard-vowel letters ≤f≥ or ≤j≥ that would be pronounced as [ƒ] or [o⁄] if they were stressed -- merge with each other. Under first degree of reduction (first pretonic position, position not after consonant), the unstressed vowel is pronounced as a central, non-high, moderately open vowel, written as []:20 lfdyj´ [dvno]⁄ ‘long ago’, ljk;yj´ [dlznó] ‘must’, ‹ msc gen sg jlyjuj´ [dnvo⁄] ‘one’, ghbjndjh∫nm [pr˛ìtvr˛í5 t˛] ‘open somewhat’. Under second degree of reduction, the unstressed vowel is [´], a vowel shorter and less open than []: second pretonic yfuhe;ƒnm [n´gr
za‹5 t˛⁄ ] ‘burden’, gjlhfcnƒnm [p´drstƒt˛] ‘nurture’; post-tonic vƒvjxrf [mƒm´c˛ ‹k´] ‘mommy’, j´,kfxrj [ob⁄ l´c˛ ‹k´] ‘cloud’, dtl=hjxrj [v˛ìd˛o5r´c˛ ⁄ ‹k´] ‘bucket’. The merger of {o} with {a}, and the pronunciation of the resulting vowel as an unrounded central vowel, is termed akan
e. ˇo (=[ˇs zˇ]): For historical reasons, non-high vowels after ˇSo Series {e a o} after S have unusual behavior. During the time when [s ‹ z]‹ were still soft, original ∗ e was ˛ ‹ ], later [Sì˛ ‹ e ], as it was after any soft consonant. When these consoraised to [Se nants lost palatalization, the vowel was backed to [S‹o εï ], later [S‹o ïε ]. In the twentieth century, the vowel has merged with [ï] from series {i}: ;tk†pysq [zïl˛ ‹ †5 znïiü] 21 ‘iron’, ;bk†w [zïl˛ ‹ †5 c] ‘lodger’. The same vowel is pronounced for {e} in borrowings after mutable consonants if they remain hard: vjltk∫hjdfnm [m´dïl˛ír´v´t˛] ‘model’ (cf. vjl†km [mde5l˛⁄ ] ‘model’). For {a o}, there are two possibilities: an inherited pronunciation [ï] or a newer pronunciation []. How these two variants are distributed is complex (Table 2.3; §2.2.5). Under second degree of reduction after ˇSo , vowels from the non-high series {e a o} are pronounced as a central vowel [ï]: ;tktpƒ [zïl˛ ‹ ìzƒ] ‘gland’, bp ifkfiƒ [ìs
‹ ïlsƒ] ‘out of the cabin’, itkrjd∫wf [s ïlkov˛ í c´] ‘mulberry’. ‹ ‹ In absolute initial position the vowel spelled ≤э≥ in foreign borrowings is raised though not backed (there is no preceding hard consonant), and is merged with [ì]: эnƒ; [ìtƒs]‹ ‘storey’, эrhƒy [ìkrƒn] ‘screen’, identical to buhƒ [ìgrƒ] ‘game’.22 20 21 22

The vowel is glossed as raised and backed [a] by Jones and Ward (1969). In Avanesov’s conservative norm, [zï‹ ε l˛], not quite identical to [zï‹ l˛]. According to SRIa 1.103--4.

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 2.3 Vowel series series

Co

ˇo (=[ˇs ˇz]) S

C ¸

{u} {i} {e}

[
] [ï] [ï]∞

[
] [ï] [ï]∞

[
] [ì] [ì]∞

{o} {f}

†

[ø] ([´] ) [ø] ([´]† )

borrowing [ø] [ø]Co ∼ [ï]C ¸

´] alternation with [V ∞ [ï] [ø]

´] no alternation with [V n.a. [ï]∞

[ì]∞ [ì]∞

x† = second-degree reduction x∞ = Avanesov’s conservative norm = [ìε ] ∼ [ïε ]

The relations of stressed and unstressed members of vowel series are schematized in Table 2.3 in three contexts. As shown in Table 2.3, there are more distinctions of vowels under stress -five -- than among unstressed vowels. In the contemporary norm, three vowels are distinguished after hard consonants, two after soft. (In the conservative style of Avanesov, four distinctions are made after hard consonants, three after soft.) Further reduction and merger is possible under second degree of reduction in some varieties of speech. The troublesome question is whether unstressed [ï* ] (using breve here to mark significant shortening of an stressed vowel) is so reduced that it merges with [´] -- whether the unstressed vowels of dat pl lj´,hsv and msc=nt loc sg lj´,hjv are pronounced the same. Panov (1990) decides that merger has long been a constant possibility in a less-than-standard, allegro style, but has not achieved normative status. Also, in an extreme version of allegro style, series {u} may lose its labialization and merge after soft consonants with [ì* ] and after hard consonants with [ï* ], which in this style will be identical to [´]. At this point, only two unstressed vowel phones would be left under second degree of reduction: [ì* ] vs. [ï* ] ≈ [´]. The two vowel phones would be distributed complementarily, [ì* ] after palatalized consonants, [ï* ] ≈ [´] after hard. This allegro system is not normative, in Panov’s view, but it is widespread.23

2.2.5 Unpaired consonants [ˇs ˇz c] and unstressed vocalism As noted, [s ‹ z],‹ which are always hard and therefore immutable and unpaired, affect unstressed vowels in a manner different from that of ordinary mutable hard consonants.24 As mentioned, a vowel from series {e} becomes [ï] after [s ‹ z]:‹ ;†vxeu ‘pearl’, ;tvxé;ysq [zï]. ‹ In similar fashion, for vowels that alternate with stressed [o⁄] and could be identified as series {o}, only [ï] is used after [s ‹ z]:‹ nom pl ;=ys, 23

As Comrie, Stone, and Polinsky 1996 treat this merger.

24

Kasatkin 1989.

Sounds

nom sg ;tyƒ [zïnƒ] ‘wife’, nom sg i=kr, gen sg itkrƒ [sïlkƒ] ‘silk’ (Table 2.3).25 ‹ ‹ Some recent borrowings have an unstressed vowel which, because it is spelled as ≤j≥, might be identified as belonging to series {o}. In imitation of its foreign source, this ≤j≥ can be pronounced with only partial reduction as a shortened mid, labialized vowel [o*], for example Ijg†y ‘Chopin’ [so‹* p†n]. As such words are assimilated, this ≤j≥ is reduced to [] in first pretonic position: ;jyuk=h ‘juggler’ [zngl˛ o5r], ija=h ‘chauffeur’ [sf˛ ‹ ⁄ Ijg†y [sp†n], ‹ ‹ j5´r] (Table 2.3). This pronunciation is what might be expected given the pronunciation of unstressed {o} after paired hard consonants: djlƒ [vdƒ] ‘water’. Vowels of series {a} show variation between two variants, [] and [ï]. The older pronunciation was [S‹o εï ], later [S‹o ïε ], now [ï]. Throughout the nineteenth century up until the beginning of the twentieth century, [S‹o εï ], later [Sï‹ ε ], was used in native words. Both variants occurred in borrowings, with a stylistic difference: [], which was closer to the pronunciation of the (often French) sources, was a mark of “spoken language of good society,”26 in contradistinction to the pronunciation that fit the native Russian pattern, with [S‹o εï ]/[S‹o ïε ]. In the twentieth century, sociolinguistic investigations document that there is variation and change, but the change is not uniform; individual lexemes are regularizing usage, but not all lexemes are regularizing in the same direction.27 Native words in which the unstressed vowel does not alternate with [ƒ] have kept [ï]: h;fyj´q ‘rye’ [rzïno ‹ 5 iü⁄ ], gen pl kjifl†q ‘horses’ [l´sïd˛ ‹ e55⁄i8]. Native words in which the pretonic vowel alternates with stressed [ƒ] are generalizing []: gen sg ;fhƒ (nom sg ;ƒh) ‘heat’, gen sg dj;frƒ (nom sg dj;ƒr) ‘guide’, nom pl ifu∫ (nom sg iƒu) ‘step’, 3sg e;fcy=ncz ‘becomes horrified’ (adj e;ƒcysq).28 In borrowings, the vowel depends on the following consonant: [ï] is kept if the following consonant is (or used to be) palatalized: ;fr†n ‘jacket’ [zïk˛ ‹ e5t], ⁄ ;fcv∫y ‘jasmine’. In contrast, [] is being generalized in words in which the following consonant is hard: ifn†y ‘auburn-haired person’ [st†n], if,kj´y ‘clich†’, ifkƒi ‘cabin’, ifvgƒycrjt ‹ ‘champagne’.29 25

26

27 28 29

As is not surprising, since stressed [o]⁄ after [s ‹ z]‹ derives from etymological ∗ e. Here is a place where the notion of series is revealed as something of a fiction. In this context, there is no evidence that the unstressed vowel ever actually became [o]. The unstressed value here is [ï] because it remained ∗ e, and had the same fate as other unstressed ∗ e after [s z]. ‹ ‹ See Panov 1990:260ff. Grech (1827) asserted that it was appropriate, in the “spoken language of good society,” to say ifvgfycrjt (that is, [sø‹ ]) rather than ibvgfycrjt (a vowel of the type [εï ], subsequently [ïε ], now [ï]). At the turn of the twentieth century, Koˇsuti´c (1919) gives two pronunciations for borrowings: [ø] (literary) and [ï] (non-literary). Interestingly, he gives only vowels similar to [ï] in native words in which the relevant vowel alternates with stressed [ƒ]. Thus these two sources suggest that [ø] has long been used in borrowings. Krysin 1974. :fk†nm ‘pity’, with [ï], is exceptional in this regard if it is related to ;ƒkm, ;ƒkrj ‘feel sorry for’, but the derivational connection is tenuous (and the following [l˛] favors [ï]). Panov 1968 puts the burden on alternation, Krysin 1974:105 on the following consonant. Evidently both are relevant.

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

Evidently, the use of [] in borrowings prepared the way for using [] in native words in which there is alternation with stressed [á], when the unstressed vowel is still associated with [ƒ], and this has become normative. As noted, [ï] is maintained in native words when the unstressed vowel does not alternate with stressed [ƒ]. In borrowings, both [] and [ï] occur, distributed according to the following consonant. A following palatalized consonant tipped the balance in favor of the raised variant [ï]. Thus far with series {o}, only borrowings use a low unstressed vowel []. Words in which the unstressed vowel alternates with stressed [o]⁄ do not use []. This is an important difference between {a} and {o}, reflected in Table 2.3. The sound [c] is, like [s ‹ z],‹ an unpaired immutable hard consonant, but it hardly occurs before series {o} or {a}. A visible exception is the root wƒhm ‘tsar’, in which {a} under stress alternates with [] under first degree of reduction: gen sg wfhz´, wfh∫wf ‘tsar’s wife’.

2.2.6 Post-tonic soft vocalism In general, unstressed vowels associated with series {a o e} are pronounced as a high front vowel [ì] after any soft consonant. For this reason, one might expect to find [ì] in place of post-tonic vowels in grammatical endings as well. It is regularly stated, however, that this vowel can, depending on the morpheme, be pronounced as [´]. Grammatical morphemes differ, and there is some change -and some disagreement among authorities. Table 2.4 lists contexts of nouns, organized by the vowel that appears when the given morpheme is stressed.30 There is a gradation of possibilities, from regular [´] to regular [ì]. One phonological condition overrides other considerations. A following soft consonant evokes [ì], as in: Context 10 (Declension ins sg lth†dytq ‘village’ [n˛ ì8i]) and Context 12 (Declension {-†j} gen pl gtxƒktq ‘sorrows’ [pìc˛ ‹a55⁄l˛ìi8]). Also, [ì] has become usual since the beginning of the twentieth century in Context 6 (ins pl lth†dyzvb: previously [n˛ ´m˛ì], now [n˛ ìm˛ì]). Beyond this syntagmatic phonetic condition, the choice between [´] and [ì] depends on a paradigmatic condition -- on the vowel phones that occur in the given morpheme in other words. At one extreme, [´] is used consistently in Contexts 1--5, for example, nom sg lth†dyz ‘village’ [n˛ ´]. The vowel of these morphemes would be [ƒ] under stress (nom sg ujkjdƒ ‘head’, ptvkz´ ‘land’) and [´] after hard 30

See Koˇsuti´c 1919 (on Old Muscovite), Avanesov 1972:69--71, Kuz
mina 1966, Panov 1968:42--56. In summarizing Old Muscovite usage, Kuz
mina claims that the adjectival endings had exclusively [ì] (1966:7), relying on Koˇsuti´c’s characterization of [ì] as literary, [´] as uneducated (1919:100). But Koˇsutic ⁄ (1950:80) transcribes gen sg cbytuj ‘blue’ as [c
by
f df ], exactly parallel to gen sg lj,hjuj ‘good’ [lj,hf df ]. Presumably Panov would posit [ì] in gen pl {-óv}, ins sg {-ój}, and gen pl {-†j}, contexts with closed syllables, which implies [ì] for Panov.

Sounds

Table 2.4 Post-tonic vowel reduction, nominal morphology Old Muscovite

Avanesov

Kuz
mina, Panov

´ ´ ´ ´ ´ ´

´ ´ ´ ´ ´ ´ì

´ ´ ´ ´ (∼ ì) ´ (∼ ì) ´ì

7 nom=acc sg {-ó} 8 ins sg {-óm} 9 gen pl {-óv} 10 ins sg {-ój} [C ¸ V* ] ∼ [†]

´ (∼ì) ´ ´ ´

´>ì ´ì ´ì ì

´ ´>ì ì† ì†

´ (63%) ∼ ì ´ (81--83%)

11 [dat-] loc sg {-†} 12 gen pl {-†j}

ì ì

ì ì

ì† ì†

ì

Context [C ¸ V* ] ∼[Co ´] ∼ [ƒ] 1 nom=acc pl {-ƒ} 2 nom sg {-ƒ} 3 gen sg {-ƒ} 4 dat pl {-ƒm} 5 loc pl {-ƒx} 6 ins pl {-ƒm˛i} [C ¸ V* ] ∼ [Co ´] ∼ [ó]

Krysin

´ (90%)

´ ] = unstressed vowel in alternation with stressed vowel [V* ] ∼ [V x ∼ y = x occurs in variation with y x  y = x has yielded to y x > y = x is yielding to y ins sg = case-number form of Declension x† = presumed, not explicitly stated

consonants (nom sg ,ƒ,f ‘old woman’ [bƒb´]). At the opposite extreme, the locative singular of Declension and Declension (also the dative singular of Declension ) is [†] under stress. The vowel of this morpheme does not occur after hard mutable consonants, and accordingly there is no alternation with [Co ´]. Unstressed, this vowel has the variant [ì] after C ¸ (and [ï] after immutable o‹ S : yf gkz´;t ‘on the beach’ [zï]). ‹ The contexts of greatest interest are those whose vowels alternate between [o⁄] under stress and unstressed [´] after hard consonants: Context 7 nom=acc sg vj´ht ‘sea’ -- recall jryj´ [knj´] ‘window’, gbnm= ‘drinking’ [pìt˛jo5],⁄ cnƒlj [stƒd´] ‘herd’ -- and Context 8 ins sg vj´htv -- recall jryj´v [knj´m] ‘window’, gbnm=v [pìt˛jöj´ m], cnƒljv [stƒd´m]. (Context 9, for example, gen pl ,hƒnmtd ‘brothers’, belongs here as well.) In these contexts, the Old Muscovite style at the beginning of the twentieth century had [´] after soft consonants. With respect to usage after the middle of the twentieth century, there is disagreement among commentators. Avanesov (1972:70), recalling that [´] was the Old Muscovite norm, concedes that in the nominative-accusative singular

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

[ì] has become possible (“widely known”) and that in the instrumental singular [ì] has even replaced [´] (the latter “must be considered moribund”).31 Avanesov’s view contrasts with that of Kuz
mina (1966) and Panov (1968), who report on a questionnaire administered during the 1960s to 100 students of the cohort 1940--49. In that questionnaire, 98 percent of the respondents had [ì] in ins sg rƒvytv ‘stone’ and, surprisingly, 98 percent had [´] in nom sg gj´kt ‘field’. Their results seem quite unambiguous in these two contexts; they are dramatically less ambiguous than in other words in which the vowel is usually thought to be pronounced as [´] without variation: loc pl lßyz[ ‘melons’ (74% [´]) or dat pl lßyzv (only 52% [´]).32 A third view derives from the mass survey in the 1960s (Krysin 1974), according to which [´] was reported to be basically stable, or slightly increasing, in both contexts. In that survey, the use of [´] in nom=acc sg gj´kt rose from just above 50 percent for the oldest generation to above 60 percent in the final cohort of 1940--49, and [´] in ins sg vtld†ltv ‘bear’ and ins sg gkƒxtv ‘cry’ basically held constant at 80 percent over the six decades of the survey.33 To summarize about the two contexts, nom=acc sg vj´ht and ins sg vj´htv: Avanesov believed that both were developing towards [ì]; Kuz
mina and Panov found that they were moving in opposite directions; Krysin’s survey suggest that both contexts were developing in the same direction, towards [´]. It is difficult to resolve the discrepancy among these sources. A pilot instrumental investigation carried out for this study (six speakers) did not yield unambiguous results. There was no consistent difference between loc sg vj´ht, in which only [ì] is expected, and nom=acc sg vj´ht, in which variation between [´] and [ì] is expected. The one reasonably clear result was that the vowel of ins sg vj´htv had a higher F1 and lower F2 than other vowels in nouns, implying a more [´]-like pronunciation, evidently in anticipation of the following [m]. From this limited investigation, it was not clear to what extent a categorial distinction between [´] and [ì] remains in these morphemes. 31

32

33

A point of notation: Avanesov (1972) uses three symbols: [(], a low back vowel after hard consonants; [m] is unstressed {i}; and Avanesov’s [´] is the front vowel occurring after soft consonants for series {e a o}. Other sources (Panov) collapse Avanesov’s two front vowels [m] and [´] to [m], and Avanesov himself abandons [´] in favor of [m] in his transcribed texts (p. 356: lh†vktim has [m], not [´]) and in the summary of phonetic variants (pp. 311--14). In Table 2.4, Avanesov’s [m] and his [´] are both written as [ì], [(] as [´]. Kuz
mina 1966, Panov 1968:47--48. Comrie, Stone, and Polinsky (1996:56--59), after deliberation, side with Kuz
mina. Panov’s position cannot be separated from his strong belief that the distribution of [´] vs. [ì] must be determined by phonetic factors: for underlying , [´] is said to occur only in final open syllables (therefore in nom=acc sg gj´kt) while [ì] is said to occur elsewhere (therefore in ins sg gkƒxtv). Krysin 1974: 114, Fig. 24.

Sounds

Table 2.4 above focused on endings in nouns, the richest set of morphemes in which variation in post-tonic vocalism can be observed. In addition, soft-stem adjectives generally have [ì] (gen sg msc=nt gh†;ytuj, dat sg msc=nt gh†;ytve, loc sg msc=nt gh†;ytv ‘former’).34 The final vowel of singular adjectives after [j] is [´] (nom nt sg cnƒhjt ‘old’, nom fem sg cnƒhfz [´i8´]) but that of the plural normally [ì] (nom pl cnƒhst [ïi8ì]). Present adverbial participles (lttghbxfcnbz) have [´] (e.g., gj´vyz ‘remembering’), a pronunciation that is consistent with [ƒ] in lexemes with final stress (ytcz´ ‘carrying’). Reflexive present adverbial participles still allow [ì], under the influence of the following soft consonant (ghbjcƒyzcm ‘putting on airs’ is Panov’s example). Individual forms such as psv nom msc sg pƒyzn ‘occupied’, msc sg pst pƒyzk once had only [ì] but now prefer [´].35 The thematic ligature that marks the present tense in verbs of e-Conjugation is [o]⁄ (ytc=im ‘you carry’, etc.) under stress. Unstressed, the ligature in the middle forms of the present tense is only [ì] (2sg k†ptim [l˛e55⁄z˛ ìs],‹ 3sg k†ptn, 1pl k†ptv ‘climb’). The third plural is [´] in verbs of the i-Conjugation (gkƒnzn ‘they pay’ [plƒöt˛´t]). The Old Muscovite [´] in nom=acc sg vj´ht and ins sg vj´htv is unexpected on phonetic grounds -- after a soft consonant in positions of reduction, original non-high vowels have generally become [ì]. The origin of the Old Muscovite pronunciation has been disputed. Most likely, it is analogy, at the level of phonetics. The [ì] that might be expected after soft consonants was suppressed, or never developed, in deference to the [´] that occurs after hard consonants in the same morphemes: nom sg lth†dyz [C ¸ ´] imitates nom sg ,ƒ,f [Co ´], ins sg vtld†ltv [C ¸ ´m] imitates ins sg dj´krjv ‘wolf’ [Co ´m]. The fact that [´] can participate in analogy shows that unstressed vowels have some psychological independence. The expected development to [ì] did take place in those morphemes whose vowel would not be found unstressed after paired hard consonants (only [ì] in loc sg yf vj´ht, 2sg prs k†ptim, etc.).

2.2.7 Unstressed vowels in sequence When {a} or {o} follows another vowel, it does not have to share duration with a preceding consonant in its syllable, and it is less reduced, even two or more syllables from the stress: e jujhj´lf ‘near the garden’ [√grj´d´], yt jnjckƒk ‘did not send off’ [n˛ ìtslƒl]. An {a} or {o} that is the first in a sequence of two vowels far removed from stress will be fully reduced, as yfeuƒl ‘by guesswork’ [n´√gƒd], yfbuhƒnmcz ‘play much’ [n´ìgra⁄tˇ ts´], except when the first vowel is followed by 34 35

Avanesov 1972:71 implies there is a change from [´] to [ì]; Kuz
mina 1966 mentions only [ì]. Panov (1968:49), who relies on Koˇsuti´c 1919 and Chernyshev 1908.

51

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

another []. Then the first vowel assimilates to the second and does not reduce, as in pf jlbyj´rbv ‘beyond isolated’ [zøød˛ ìno5k˛⁄ ìm], djjleitdk=y ‘inspired’ [vøød√sïvl˛ ‹ o5n]. ⁄ In allegro style the two [] coalesce and reduce: cjjnyji†ybt ‘interconnection’ neutral [stns†e ‹ 5 n˛⁄ ì´], allegro [s´tnøse‹ 5 n˛⁄ ì´]. As the first of a sequence, {e} reduces normally to [ì]: ytj,[jl∫vj ‘necessary’ [n˛ ìpxd˛ ím´].

2.2.8 Unstressed vowels in borrowings In foreign borrowings of high culture, unstressed mid vowels (the vowels written as ≤t≥ and ≤j≥) do not necessarily reduce completely according to the rules that apply to native words. They can instead maintain something of the pronunciation of the source language and, though they are shorter, they do not merge with series {a} or {i} according to the usual pattern: ktuƒnj ‘legato’ [le*gƒto*], utyjw∫l ‘genocide’ [ge*no*cit].36 As words are assimilated, the semi-reduced foreign pronunciation of ≤j≥ as [o*] yields to [] ([´]), as in native words. Thus, in certain frequently used borrowings, the usage of [o*] for ≤j≥ declined quite dramatically from the oldest cohort (1890--99) to the youngest (1940--49): rjyuh†cc ‘congress’ (63% > 27%), gjhna†km ‘notebook’ (62% > 20%), ghjw†cc ‘process’ (76% > 32%), cjy†n ‘sonnet’ (78% > 41%), hjz´km ‘piano’ (51% > 25%).37

2.3 Consonants 2.3.1 Classification of consonants The quintessential consonants are obstruents (= C/ ), segments that involve obstruction or serious narrowing in the long path from the larynx to the lips. Obstruents are listed above the internal line in Table 2.5. In addition to obstruents, consonants include sonorants, a group of sounds that are heterogeneous but share the negative property of being neither obstruents nor vowels. Sonorants are listed below the line in Table 2.5. Consonants are defined by a complex of articulatory activities. Consonants can be voiced (the membranes of the vocal cords are taut and vibrate) or voiceless (the membranes are open and relaxed, allowing air to pass without vibration). Obstruents can be produced with different trajectories of gestures, or manners of articulation. Obstruents can be stops, sounds that involve a sudden gesture of complete closure (for example, the complete closure of both lips to make a [b]), a short interval of stasis, and a sudden release. Or they can be fricatives, which involve a more gradual restriction of the airflow without complete closure followed by an interval of incomplete closure and then a more gradual release. Affricates are intermediate; they are produced by a stop closure and a 36

Avanesov 1972:174, 167--68.

37

Glovinskaia 1976, specifically Table 12.

Sounds

Table 2.5 Russian consonant phones bilabial labio-dental voiceless stop voiced stop voiceless affricate voiced affricate voiceless fricative voiced fricative glide nasal stop lateral trill

p p˛ b b˛

f v

f˛ v˛

dental t d c Z∞ s z

(alveo-)palatal

t˛ d˛

s˛ z˛

velar k g

ˇs ˇz

c* ˛ Z*∞ ˛ s*
˛ ‡ z* ˛


k˛ † g˛ †

x x˛ † ∞

j m m˛

n n˛ l l˛ r r˛

x† = restricted distribution: / {i e}, rarely / {f j b} x∞ = restricted distribution: / C 3/ x‡ = normally long (/V V), shortened adjacent to C

brief interval of closure followed by a more gradual release similar to that of a fricative. Obstruents are also defined by the place of articulation, the place in the vocal tract where the obstruction occurs and, correlatively, the mobile organ used to make the restriction. One ingredient of the place of articulation is palatalization. How consonants are palatalized depends on where the consonant is articulated, but there is a basic similarity. The matrix of obstruents in Table 2.5 is organized by place of articulation along the top, with non-palatalized consonants listed to the left of palatalized. Bilabial stops are produced by closing the lips together: [b], [p]. The closest fricatives [f f˛] and [v v˛ ] are not pure bilabials, but labio-dentals, formed by moving the lower lip up under and close to the upper teeth, constricting the airflow. However, with respect to voicing rules, [v v˛ ] do not quite act like well-mannered obstruents, and can be designated as a distinct class of sounds “W” that is intermediate between obstruents and sonorants (§2.3.9). When a labial or labio-dental consonant is palatalized, at approximately the same time the primary closure (or restriction) is made with the lips (or upper lip and lower teeth), the blade of the tongue is arched up and raised towards the hard palate (see [p], broken line in Fig. 2.10). In non-palatalized labials, the tongue is in a neutral position (see [p], solid line, in Fig. 2.11). Russian has a class of dental sounds whose obstruction is made in the region of the upper teeth. As the dental stops [t d] or the affricate [c] are produced, the tip and blade of the tongue touch against the upper teeth. The body of

53

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

[p] = [p] =

Fig. 2.10 [p], [p]. From Avanesov 1972: fig. 8

the tongue is flat or even depressed, which is to say that hard dental stops are slightly velarized (see Fig. 2.11, solid line).38 In producing palatalized dental stops (broken line in Fig. 2.11), the tongue makes contact all the way from the upper teeth through the alveolar ridge and along the hard palate. Whereas with labials palatalization is a somewhat independent gesture, with dentals, palatalization is part and parcel of the articulatory gesture. For some speakers, the palatalized dental stops [t˛ d˛ ] have begun to develop a touch of frication in their release, especially before [í]: n∫g ‘type’ [t˛s˛ íh], l∫rj ‘wildly’ [d˛ z˛ ík´].39 The dental fricatives [s z] are pronounced with the tip of the tongue pointing towards the top of the upper teeth, leaving an aperture through with which air flows turbulently. The hard dental fricatives [s z] are noticeably velarized. The palatalized dental fricatives [s˛ z˛ ] are made with the front of the tongue making an arch that follows the shape of the teeth and hard palate, with the narrowest aperture at the teeth. Russian has a group of sounds classed together as having an alveo-palatal (or sometimes simply palatal) place of articulation. In the hard fricatives [s ‹ z]‹ -- the sounds spelled by Cyrillic ≤i≥ and ≤;≥ -- the tip of the tongue approaches the alveolar ridge, higher than is the case with [s z]. In addition, [s ‹ z]‹ lift the sides of the tongue and force air through a groove, while [s z] have a narrow horizontal slit. These (alveo-)palatal fricatives are strongly velarized: the middle of the tongue is depressed and the back of the tongue is arched upwards (solid line, Fig. 2.12).40 The sounds [s ‹ z]‹ are pronounced as hard, even when (in borrowings) the following vowel letter is ≤/≥: ,hji÷hf ‘brochure’ [su‹ ⁄r], gfhfi÷n ‘parachute’ [su‹ ⁄t], though sometimes ;/h∫ ‘jury’ [z˛
‹ r˛í]. As a new (hypercorrect?) tendency, 38 40

39 Matusevich 1976:183. Velarization is evident in the sketch of SRIa 1.43. Avanesov 1972:40, Fig. 14; see also Matusevich 1976:182.

Sounds

[t] = [t] = Fig. 2.11 [t], [t˛]. From Avanesov 1972: fig. 11

Fig. 2.12 [ˇs], [ˇs˛]. From Avanesov 1972:

fig. 14

[s ‹ z]‹ can soften under assimilation: dxthƒiybq ‘yesterday’s’ normative [sn˛‹ ], new [s˛n‹ ˛ ].41 Russian has two other alveo-palatal fricatives, [s˛
‹ ] (the sound associated with Cyrillic ≤o≥) and [z
˛‹ ] (an older pronunciation of Cyrillic spellings ≤;;≥ or ≤p;≥ in certain words such as lhj´;;b ‘yeast’, †p;e ‘I drive’, gj´p;t ‘later’). These sounds are palatalized; the tip of the tongue is pointed towards the teeth, and the blade of the tongue curves up along the hard palate (broken line, Fig. 2.12). The alveopalatal affricate [ˇc˛], spelled ≤x≥, is likewise “soft” -- there is no corresponding hard ∗ [ˇc]. In its initial closure phase, it involves essentially the same tongue position as [t˛]; contact is made from the alveolar ridge along the hard palate. In its release, [c‹˛] is similar to the soft alveo-palatal fricative [s˛
‹ ]. In the production of velars [k g x], the tongue approaches or touches the roof of the mouth, in the region where the hard palate and soft palate meet (solid line, Fig. 2.13). The voiced fricative [ ] is quite restricted, occurring only before a following voiced obstruent: nh=[ly†dysq [ d˛ n˛]. Palatalized velars [k˛ g˛ x˛ ] have basically the same tongue configuration as non-palatalized velars. They differ from non-palatalized velars in that the tongue makes contact (or restriction) further to the front of the mouth (broken line, Fig. 2.13). Sonorants, listed below the center line of Table 2.5, are a motley group. Nasal stops [m m˛ n n˛ ] have a complete closure in the oral cavity like that of a stop -the place of the closure is bilabial for [m m˛], dental for [n n˛ ] -- but, in addition, they simultaneously open the velum, allowing air to flow into the nasal cavity and resonate. 41

Kasatkin 2001:86.

55

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

[k] = [k] =

Fig. 2.13 [k], [k˛]. From Avanesov 1972:

fig. 20

The approximate [j] is articulated with a tongue position like that of the vowel [i], so that the blade of the tongue raises close to the hard palate behind the alveolar ridge; [j] differs from [i] in that it is not the peak of syllables and involves greater narrowing of the tongue to the front of the roof of the mouth. Given its tongue shape, [j] is intrinsically soft. The trills [r r˛] are made by one or more taps in the dental region. With the laterals [l l˛], the blade of the tongue makes complete closure in the dental region but the sides of the tongue are raised, allowing air to pass laterally (hence the term) along its sides. Together the [r]-sounds and the [l]-sounds are liquids. Hard [r] and especially hard [l] are velarized: the middle portion of the tongue is depressed and the back of the tongue body is raised towards the back of the palate. Collectively, the nasals, liquids (trills and laterals), and the glide [j] can be grouped together as sonorants (in notation, the set “R”), a loose class of sounds that are neither vowels nor obstruents. Sonorants can distinguish palatalization, in this respect like obstruents. Unlike obstruents, sonorants lack a distinction of voicing; like vowels, they are normally voiced, and do not cause preceding obstruents to become voiced (§2.3.9). Between an obstruent and another obstruent or word end (the contexts C/ RC/ or C/ R#), sonorants can become syllabic: MXATf ‘from MKhAT’ [ t ´ m x ƒt´], jrnz´,hm ‘October’, [økt˛a55⁄b(ə)r˛], hé,km ‘ruble’ [r´ ub(ə)l˛], 42 ( ə) ;∫pym ‘life’ [z˝‹ 5 z˛⁄ n˛ ].

2.3.2 Palatalization of consonants Most consonants -- sonorants as well as obstruents -- can be palatalized or not. That is, for almost every consonantal articulation -- for almost every combination of place of articulation, manner of articulation, voicing and nasality -- there is one sound that is not palatalized and another that is pronounced with similar 42

“I pronounce the word ;bpym as two syllables, with a ‘fleeting’ ı*” (Trubetzkoy 1975:238).

Sounds

gestures but is palatalized. For example, both a palatalized voiced labial stop [b˛ ] and a non-palatalized [b] occur, and both a palatalized voiceless dental fricative [s˛ ] and a non-palatalized [s] occur. Palatalization is similar but not identical for sounds of different places of articulation. Though there are these minor differences, all palatalized consonants influence vowels in the same way. When a given articulation occurs in both palatalized and non-palatalized forms, that articulation can be said to be paired, or mutable, for palatalization. Thus [b] and [b˛ ] are phonetically paired, or mutable. Most consonants are mutable. Labials and dentals obviously are. Velars are as well, although the palatalized forms of velars [k˛ g˛ x˛ ] are more restricted than palatalized labials or dentals; they do not occur in all phonological contexts, and they rarely if ever distinguish words in opposition to [k g x]. Some consonants are not mutable: the glide [j] (necessarily palatalized); the hard affricate [c]; the soft affricate [c˛ ‹]; the hard fricatives [s]‹ (Cyrillic ≤i≥) and [z]‹ (Cyrillic ≤;≥). Although the alveo-palatal fricatives [s˛
‹ z˛
‹ ] are palatalized, they are not paired with [s ‹ z]‹ in this sense, since [s ‹ z]‹ do not become palatalized at the end of noun stems in the locative singular (j lei† ‘about the soul’ has [s],‹ not ∗ [s˛]‹ or ∗ [s˛
‹ ]) nor in the conjugation of verbs (g∫itim has [s],‹ not ∗ [s˛
‹ ]). Accordingly, four groups of consonants can be distinguished: [2]

hard, immutable: soft, immutable: hard, mutable: soft, mutable:

[s ‹ z ‹ c] [j c˛ ‹ s˛
‹ z˛
] ‹ [p t k x s z], etc. [p t˛ k˛ x˛ s˛ z˛ ], etc.

Among labials and dentals, both palatalized and non-palatalized variants occur before vowels and after vowels in word-final position. In both contexts, palatalization can distinguish words. Compare: prevocalic nj´vysq ‘languid’ [t] vs. n=vysq ‘dark’ [t˛], gƒcnm ‘fall’ [p] vs. gz´cnm ‘metacarpus’ [p]; and final postvocalic dßgbn ‘drunk down’ [t] vs. dßgbnm ‘to drink down’ [t˛], ujnj´d ‘ready’ [f] vs. ujnj´dm! ‘prepare!’ [f˛]. Because contrasts occur in final position where no vowel follows the consonant, palatalization (or its absence) must be intrinsic to the consonant, and in a phonemic analysis, it is the consonant, palatalized or not, that distinguishes words in Russian. If palatalization is distinctive for some consonants in that position, it can be assumed to be distinctive in position before a vowel. Thus the contrast of [t] in nj´vysq ‘languid’ vs. [t˛] in n=vysq ‘dark’ is usually analyzed as a contrast of two types of dental stops, non-palatalized [t] as opposed to palatalized [t˛].43 43

In contrast to the abstract phonology of (for example) Lightner 1972, in which there is a rich set of vowel distinctions and consonants are intrinsically hard, becoming palatalized in the position before (underlying) front vowels.

57

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

Palatalized and non-palatalized consonants occur with different degrees of freedom depending on the context (the position in the word) and depending on the consonant itself. All mutable (phonetically paired) consonants historically were palatalized before {e} within lexemes. Palatalization therefore used not to be distinctive in the position before {e}. This historical rule, which dates from the period when palatalization first arose in Russian (a thousand years ago, in the period around the fall of the jers), has been eroded in various ways. Consonants at the end of prefixes are not palatalized before a root-initial {e} (cэrjyj´vbnm ‘economize ’), nor is the final consonant of a preposition palatalized before the {e} of the demonstrative …njn ‘this’ (d …njv ‘in that’, gjl …nbv ‘under that’, c …nbv ‘with that’, etc., with [ve], [de], [se], not [v˛ e5],⁄ ∗ [d˛ e5],⁄ ∗ [s˛ e5]). ⁄ Consonants remain non-palatalized before {e} in abbreviations, when that {e} is word-initial in the base word from which it derives, as in YЭG ([nep], not [*n˛ e5p] ⁄ -- from “yjdfz эrjyjvbxtcrfz gjkbnbrf”). In borrowings, non-palatalized consonants occur before {e}, despite the rule that consonants were historically palatalized before {e} (§2.3.3).44 Evidently, this primordial rule is no longer productive in all contexts.

2.3.3 The distribution of palatalized consonants Not all contexts allow both palatalized and non-palatalized consonants. Palatalized consonants are more restricted in their distribution, but non-palatalized consonants occur freely in almost all positions except preceding the vowel {e}.45 The distribution of palatalization is sensitive to the type of consonant involved. Dentals distinguish palatalization before all vowels except {e}. Dentals are even developing a distinction before {e} in borrowings, and are doing so more readily than other consonants. Palatalized dentals can occur when no vowel follows. Dental stops occur palatalized in final position after a dental fricative (i†cnm ‘six’, udj´plm ‘nail’ [s˛ t]˛ vs. i†cn ‘pole’, lhj´pl ‘thrush’ [st]). At the other end of a word, a palatalized dental stop can occur in word-initial position dissimilatively before a non-dental (nmvƒ ‘darkness’, nmaé ‘phooey’). Word-internally not before vowels, palatalized dental obstruents occur dissimilatively before velars and labials, but not before other dentals or palatals: nƒnm,f ‘thievery’, cdƒlm,f ‘wedding’, n=nmrf ‘aunt’, G†nmrf ‘Pete’. Derivational suffixes that now begin with a consonant, such as {-n}, once began with etymological ∗ m, a high front vowel which, a thousand years ago, palatalized the preceding consonant. Now consonants are not palatalized before these suffixes: -obr (ajyƒhobr but ajyƒhm

44

Glovinskaia 1971, Alekseeva and Verbitskaia 1989.

45

Glovinskaia 1976.

Sounds

‘lantern’), -xbr (kƒhxbr ‘box’ but kƒhm ‘chest’), -ybr (nhj´cnybr ‘reed’ but nhj´cnm ‘cane’), -ysq (zynƒhysq but zynƒhm ‘amber’). Palatalized dental sonorants [r˛ l˛ n˛ ], and especially [l˛], are distributed more freely: word-finally after other consonants (vßckm ‘thought’, hé,km ‘ruble’, cgtrnƒrkm ‘spectacle’, ;ehƒdkm ‘crane’, dj´gkm ‘howl’, d∫[hm ‘whirlwind’, ;∫pym ‘life’), in comparatives (hƒymit ‘earlier’, nj´ymit ‘thinner’, v†ymit ‘less’), and in adjectives from months (jrnz´,hmcrbq ‘of October’, b÷ymcrbq ‘of June’, b÷kmcrbq ‘of July’). The lateral [l˛] has the widest distribution: gjhneuƒkmcrbq ‘Portuguese’, djltd∫kmxbr ‘vaudeville performer’. Labials, before vowels other than {e}, can be either non-palatalized (gƒcnm ‘fall’) or palatalized (gz´cnm ‘metacarpus’). Labials are not palatalized internally before suffixes that once conditioned palatalization: ∗ rabmsk(jm > hƒ,crbq ‘servile’. Labials distinguish palatalization in word-final position after vowels: rj´gm ‘mine’ vs. jrj´g ‘trench’, ujnj´d ‘ready’ vs. ujnj´dm ‘make ready!’. They can even occur in word-final position after consonants, in [jhéudm ‘standard’, d†ndm ‘branch’. Final palatalized labials in isolated grammatical forms were lost early in the history of Russian (athematic 1sg prs ∗ damm > lfv ‘I give’, ins sg ∗ -Vmm > {-om}),46 and there is a slight tendency to lose palatalization in labials at the end of words in other instances, for example, dj´ctvm ‘eight’ [m] ∼ [m˛]. Velars [k g x] can be either palatalized or non-palatalized. For the most part, the variants are distributed in complementary fashion: the palatalized variant occurs before {i e}, the hard variant elsewhere -- before other vowels and in a position not before a vowel. However, exceptions to this strict complementarity have begun to appear. Palatalized velars occur before the [o] functioning as the ligature in the second singular through second plural of the present tense of velar-stem verbs, with varying stylistic values in different words. By now, [k˛ ] is standard in forms of nrƒnm ‘weave’ (2sg nr=im, etc.), while [g]˛ was used by about half of speakers (in the survey of the 1960s) in ;†xm ‘burn’ (3sg ;u=n for standard ;;=n), and [k˛ ] by a quarter of speakers in g†xm ‘bake’ (2sg gtr=im); in the last two the palatalized velar is not normative. To the extent that present adverbial participles are permitted from velar-stem verbs (they are not universally accepted), the form has a palatalized velar (,thtuz´ ‘protecting’) by analogy to other obstruent-stem verbs (ytcz´ ‘carrying’). Palatalized velars appear before {a o u} in borrowings in the previous century: uzéh ‘giaour’, ,hfr=h ‘inspector’, r/h† ‘cur†’, vfybr÷h ‘manicure’. Palatalized velars do not occur in final, postvocalic position. Non-palatalized velars do not occur before {e i} in native words, although a non-palatalized pronunciation is normal for the [k] of the preposition r before {i} and {e}, as in r buh† ‘to the game’ or r …njve ‘to that’ or for 46

Shakhmatov 1925.

59

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

velars in compounds, as in lde[эnƒ;ysq ‘two-storied’ [x]. In this way, there is a contrast of sorts between palatalized [k˛ ] internal to morphemes (r∫yenm ‘toss’ > [k˛ í]) and non-palatalized [k] in the prepositional phrase (r ∫yjre ‘to the monk’ > [k˝!]). Thus velars are moving towards developing a contrast for palatalization. In native words, all mutable hard consonants (all hard consonants except [c s ‹ z])‹ are palatalized in the position before {e}. In borrowings, a non-palatalized pronunciation is possible to a greater or lesser extent, depending on how well assimilated the individual word is, the familiarity of a given speaker with foreign languages, and systemic properties. When the question was investigated in the 1960s, it was found that in some words -- seemingly more ordinary, domestic words -- the frequency of a hard pronunciation was increasing: h†qc ‘route’, rjyc†hds ‘conserves’, rjyrh†nysq ‘concrete’, ,th†n ‘beret’, htp†hd ‘reserve’. With other -- more scientific -- words, the percentage of the population using palatalized consonants decreased from the oldest to youngest cohort: fhn†hbz ‘artery’, by†hwbz ‘inertia’, rhbn†hbq ‘criterion’, эy†hubz ‘energy’, ,frn†hbz ‘bacteria’. And in a third group there is no clear direction of change: ghjuh†cc ‘progress’, gfn†yn ‘patent’.47 Hard consonants are more easily maintained in stressed than in unstressed position. Dentals most frequently allow hard consonants, then labials, then velars. Yet a hard pronunciation does occur with labials and with velars: ,tvj´km ‘b-flat’ [be*mj´ö l˛], v…h ‘mayor’ [m†r], g…h ‘peer’ [p†r], u†vvf ‘engraved stone’ [g†m´], r†vgbyu ∼ r…vgbyu ‘camping’ [k†mpìng], […vvjr ‘hammock’ [x†m´k], u†nnj ‘ghetto’ ([g†] ∼ [g˛†]).48 Overall, the possibility of having a contrast of palatalized and non-palatalized consonants depends on a number of parameters. The possibility of a contrast for palatalization depends on the place (and secondarily manner) of articulation of the consonant itself, dentals favoring the distinction more than labials, which in turn favor the distinction more than velars; yet velars at least have positional variation for palatalization, thereby ranking them ahead of the immutable consonants [s ‹ z‹ s˛
‹ z˛
‹ ], [c], and [j]. Having a contrast in palatalization also depends on context. A contrast for palatalization is most likely before vowels (/ V), less likely in a position after a vowel with no vowel following; within the latter environment, palatalization is less likely than before a consonant (/V C) than in word-final position (/V #) -- perhaps because in most instances in which a palatalized consonant would appear word-finally, the given form alternates with another form in which a vowel follows (nom sg uj´ke,m ‘dove’ [p], gen sg uj´ke,z [b˛ ´]). Palatalized consonants are infrequent in contexts not adjacent to a vowel, though they can occur (nmvƒ ‘darkness’, ;∫pym ‘life’, hé,km ‘ruble’, [jhéudm ‘standard’). Among vowels, a distinction is made more readily before back vowels 47

Glovinskaia 1976:100--10.

48

Glovinskaia 1971:63.

Sounds

Table 2.6 Palatalization assimilation and place of articulation

context

example

recommended pronunciation (Avanesov 1972)

Usage (Krysin 1974)

ZD˛ ZB˛ VB˛ VD˛

cl†kfnm ‘do’ bp,∫nm ‘beat’ d,t;ƒnm ‘run in’ dl†kfnm ‘set’

[z˛ d˛ ] [z˛ b˛ ] ∼ [zb˛ ] [v˛ b˛ ] ∼ [vb˛ ] [vd˛ ]

38% 32% 16% ---

than before front. Because back vowels have a lower F2 , their F2 is affected more by palatalized consonants than is the F2 of front vowels, whose high F2 has less room to change in the vicinity of palatalized consonants.

2.3.4 Palatalization assimilation In sequences of two consonants in which the second is palatalized, the first may or may not be palatalized by assimilation. This is just a question of the timing of the articulatory gesture of palatalization. If the raising of the blade of the tongue occurs anticipatorily as the first consonant is formed, assimilation has taken place; if raising occurs within the sequence of consonants, then assimilation has not occurred. Whether palatalization extends over both consonants or begins in the middle of the cluster depends on the extent to which the two consonants are articulatorily linked in other respects. The more linked the two consonants, the more likely it is that palatalization will extend throughout the cluster. There is variation, and the trend is very much towards losing assimilation.49 One way to approach the variation is to examine the recommendations of Avanesov (1972) for one morphological context in which most combinations occur, specifically the context of prefix and following root. To see the effect of place of articulation, we may examine combinations of fricative plus stop in Avanesov’s recommendations and compare them with Krysin’s (1974) survey of usage, in which younger speakers (the last two decades, born between 1930--39 and 1940--49) represent half of the speakers interviewed. Avanesov does not explicitly mention the combination of labial followed by dental, nor does Krysin (1974) consider it, an indication that assimilation is out of the question in this context. From Table 2.6 we derive a hierarchy of likelihood of assimilation: TT¸ ≥ TP ¸ ≥ PP ¸≥ PT¸.50 Comparing the first two terms to the last 49 50

See Drage 1967[a], 1967[b], 1968, on factors. Contemporary speakers have rather less -- if any -assimilation than was reported by Drage and Krysin (in the mid-1960s). Krysin (1974:82) states the hierarchy as TT¸ ≥ PP¸ ≥ TP¸ (and then presumably ≥ PT¸), based on the overall incidence of palatalization in all types of morphological contexts. The hierarchy artefactually reflects the kinds of examples tested. Many of the examples of dental plus labial involve prefixes

61

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 2.7 Palatalization assimilation and manner of articulation

context

example

recommended pronunciation (Avanesov 1972)

Usage (Krysin 1974)

ZV˛ ZB˛ DB˛ DV˛

bpdby∫nt ‘excuse!’ bp,∫nm ‘beat’ jn,∫nm ‘repel’ gjld=k ‘subsumed’

[zv˛ ] ∼ ± [zv˛ ] [z˛ b˛ ] ∼ ±[zb˛ ] [db˛ ] ∼ ?[d˛ b˛ ] [dv˛ ] ∼ ?[d˛ v˛ ]

35% 32% --04%

two, we note that dentals, as targets, undergo assimilation better than labials. Comparing the first two terms (TT¸ ≥ TP ¸ ) leads to the result that the same place of articulation in the source and target consonants favors assimilation, because there is no shift in the place of articulation internal to the cluster. Before velars assimilation is restricted. Labials no longer assimilate; thus in kƒgrb ‘paws’, the pronunciation [pk˛ ] that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century gave way long ago to [pk˛ ]. Assimilation of dentals to velars is out of the question: nf,k†nrb ‘tablets’ [tk˛ ], ukƒlrbvb ‘smooth’ [tk˛ ].51 Velars before velars once assimilated (vz´urbq [x˛ k˛] ‘soft’), but the tendency is again towards hardness ([kk˛ ]). Table 2.7 shows the effect of manner of articulation. Avanesov’s discussion of these combinations of dentals and labials implies a two-way grouping of ZV ¸ ≈ ZB ¸ ≥ DB ¸ ≈ DV ¸ .52 His discussion of combinations involving labials implies VV ¸ ≥ VB ¸ ≥ BB ¸ ≈ BV ¸ , and his discussion of combinations involving only dentals implies a hierarchy of SS¸ (bccz´ryenm ‘dry up’ [s˛ s˛]) ≥ ST¸ (hfpl†k ‘division’ [z˛ d˛] ∼ [zd˛ ]) ≥ TT¸ (gjllth;ƒnm ‘support’ [d˛ d˛ ] ∼ ±[dd˛ ]) ≥ TS ¸ (jnc†xm ‘hack off’ [ts˛ ]). Combining the various kinds of information leads to the hierarchy (using the symbols for dentals as general symbols): SS¸ ≥ ST¸ ≥ TT¸ ≥ TS¸. That hierarchy encodes two principles: fricatives are more likely to assimilate than stops (the first two terms of the hierarchy as opposed to the last two), and consonants that have the same manner of articulation assimilate better than those that have heterogeneous manner (the first and third terms as opposed to the second and fourth). Thus identity of manner, when there is a single elongated articulation without an internal change in manner, favors assimilation.

51 52

or even prepositions (,tp d∫krb ‘without a fork’, c g∫djv ‘with beer’), in which no more than 10 percent of speakers use palatalized dentals. These examples depress the extent of palatalization with dental targets. Among morphologically comparable examples, the 16 percent of d,t;ƒnm (the only example of labial fricative before labial at a prefix boundary) compares unfavorably with bpdby∫nt (35%), bp,∫nm (32%), or even djpd=k (22%). Matusevich 1976:203. Trubetzkoy (1975:184) noted in 1930 that there was no palatalization across prefix boundaries in jnd=hnsdfnm, though there would be assimilation internally in ,hbndtyysq.

Sounds

In combinations of dentals, dental stops do not assimilate to a following lateral [l˛] (assimilation to [r˛] is out of the question), because there is a shift to a different mode of articulation (lateral) within the cluster. Dental obstruents assimilate better to dental nasals [n˛ ], presumably because the oral component of a dental nasal is effectively just [d˛ ]. Additional factors have emerged in other investigations. Clusters in which voicing is maintained throughout seem to assimilate better (pd†hm ‘beast’ 30%, ld†hm ‘door’ 30% in Krysin’s survey) than clusters in which voicing switches and introduces an internal articulatory boundary (nd†hm 17%) or than in voiceless clusters (cg∫yrf ‘back’ 15%). Intervocalic position favors assimilation over absolute initial position (ktcy∫r ‘forester’ 49%, dj cy† ‘in sleep’ 54%, but cy†u ‘snow’ 28%). The position before [j] is a special case. Dentals within words assimilate well to [j]. Assimilation to [j] of a dental in a prefix is possible but not obligatory (c(†k ‘ate up’ [s˛ j], bp(znm ‘extract’ [z˛ j] ∼ [zj], gjl(=v ‘ascent’ [dj]) and infrequent in a preposition (bp z´vs ‘from the pit’: [ìzja5m ⁄ ï], outmoded [ìz˛ ja5m ⁄ ï], only jn =krb ‘from 53 the fir tree’ [tjo5lk˛ ⁄ ì]). With labials before [j] within words, assimilation still predominates (over 50% of speakers with gj,m=v ‘we’ll beat’ and djhj,mz´ ‘sparrow’), but assimilation is unlikely in prefixes (j,(†[fnm ‘drive around’ [bj†ö x´t˛]).

2.3.5 The glide [j] The glide [j] has realizations ranging from strong to weak to weakest.54 It is pronounced as a relatively strong, more consonantal [j] before a stressed vowel: z´vf ‘pit’ [ja5m´], z´rjhm ‘anchor’ [ja5k´r˛ ⁄ ⁄ ]. In other positions it is a weaker, less consonantal [i8]: zpßr ‘language’ [i8ìz˝!k] (initially before unstressed vowel), l†kf/n ‘they do’ [d˛ e5l´i ⁄ 8√t] (medially before unstressed vowel), [jpz´qrf ‘mistress of the house’ [xøz˛ a55⁄i8k´] (after vowel before consonant), cnƒhjq ‘old’ [stƒr´i8] (after a vowel, not before a consonant). There is a third, even weaker, pronunciation, and that is nothing. The glide [j] ∼ [i8] is, after all, just an extended [i]-like transition to or away from a vowel. It remains a segment only if it is distinct for a significant interval of time. The glide [j] merges into the adjacent vowel. It is normally lost in verbs of the eConjugation: pyƒtim ‘you know’ [zna5ì⁄ s]‹ , l†kftim ‘you do’.55 It is often inaudible in declensional endings: c edf;†ybtv ‘with respect’ [ìi8´] ∼ [ì´]; cnƒhjt ‘old’ [´i8´] ∼ [´´]; uhj´pyjt ‘threatening’ [´i8´] ∼ [´´]; jhé;bt ‘weapon’ [ïi8´] ∼ [ï´]. The glide is also absorbed after a vowel before a following stressed [í].56 Forms like vjz´ ‘my’ [møja5],⁄ cnj÷ [støju5]⁄ ‘I stand’ imply stems {moj-}, {stoj-} including 53 54 56

In reference to hard [vo ]: “the pronunciation [. . .] [dj˙y´ uf] cannot be considered correct” (p. 127), a statement which applies to a third of the population, including those with higher education. 55 Avanesov (1971:367) restores the [i Isaˇcenko 1947:145--48, 1959. 8] only in careful speech. SRIa 1.109.

63

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

[j], but that [j] is not pronounced before [í]: vj∫ [mí], cnj∫im [stís].‹ However, [j] is maintained after a consonant before stressed [í]: xm∫ ‘whose’ [c˛ ‹jí], djhj,m∫ ‘sparrows’ [b˛ jí]. In words that begin with {i}, there is no [j] left at all. As a result, when initial {i} is put after a prefix or independent word ending in a consonant, the vowel that is pronounced is [í-] (unstressed [ï]): d b[ lj´vt ‘in their house’ [vï do5m ⁄ ˛ ì], lƒk bv ‘he gave to them’ [dƒlïm], d B´ylb/ ‘to India’ [v˝!nd˛ ìi8
]. Interestingly, [j] is maintained before [ì] that derives from a non-high vowel -- Zhjckƒdkm [ì8ìrslƒvl˛], to= ‘still’ [ì8ìs˛
‹ o5],⁄ d tuj´ [vi8ìvj´], not ∗ [vïvj´].57

2.3.6 Affricates The affricates [c] and [c˛ ‹] begin, like stops, with a sudden initial closure, which is followed by a static interval of closure, but the closure is released more gradually than with an ordinary stop, in a fashion similar to the release of a fricative. To indicate their mixed character as part stop, part fricative, it is sometimes convenient to write the affricates as combinations of two symbols: [c] as [ts], [c˛ ‹] as [t˛s˛].‹ 58 Affricates are not, however, simply clusters. They are not appreciably longer than fricatives [s s].‹ The affricate [c] does not palatalize before {e} (d rjyw†) as might be expected if it were composed of [t] plus [s], inasmuch as [s] does (j k†ct). The affricate [c˛ ‹] does not condition a vowel in unstressed imperatives like true clusters: gkƒxm ‘cry!’, yt véxm ‘don’t torment!’. While affricates in Russian are units, clusters of consonants result in phonetic sequences like affricates.59 Word-internally, a dental stop [t] that is followed by [c] or [s] ([s˛ ]) will become a single consonantal complex consisting of a stop onset, a long static interval of closure (written here as “tt° ”), and a fricative-like release: gen sg ,hƒnwf ‘chap’ [bratts ° ´], cnhtv∫nmcz ‘strive’ [tts ° ´], identically 3sg prs cnhtv∫ncz [tt°s´]. Similarly, a dental stop [t] plus [c˛ ‹] becomes an affricate with an elongated closure: dj´nxbyf ‘patrimony’ [vo5ˇìn´]. t˛⁄ ts˛ ˛ ‹ If such a combination is placed before an obstruent, the long closure will be shortened, becoming equivalent to the affricate [ts] = [c]: Gtnhjpfdj´lcr [vj´tsk] = [vj´ck]. When combinations of stops and fricatives arise at prefixes, they maintain the duration of the fricative of the following root while the preceding hard stop develops the release of an affricate: jncbl†nm ‘sit out’ [cs s˛], yflpbhƒntkm ˇ] = [tsˇ ‘overseer’ [Zˇ z˛ ] = [dzˇz˛], jni∫nm ‘rebuff’ [cˇs]‹ = [ts s ], jn;∫nm ‘become obsolete’ [Zˇ z]‹ = ˇ‹ [dzˇz].‹ This [Zˇ z]‹ or [dzˇz]‹ -- a dental stop onset of normal duration followed by the release of an affricate to a full hard alveo-palatal fricative -- is the recommended pro60 nunciation for orthographic ≤l;≥ in borrowings: l;fp [dzˇza‹ s⁄ ], l;tv [dzˇze‹ m ⁄ ]. 57 58 60

Trubetzkoy (1975:237). In other systems of notation, one could write [c] = [tˇ s ], [c˛ ‹] = [t˛ˇ s˛ ‹ ] or [ˇ t ˛S˛ ]. Avanesov 1972:166, Jones and Ward 1969:102.

59

SRIa 1.106--7.

Sounds

There is, then, a range of complex articulations of stop and fricative, which can be ranked in order of increasing duration: true affricates [c c˛ ‹] = [ts t˛s],˛ ‹ which are usually lexical (also derived from clusters of [t] and [s] before consonants: ,hƒncrbq ‘brotherly’); affricates with long closures derived from stops followed by fricatives or affricates, [tts ˇ tt˛ ˇs];˛ ‹ and complexes with full fricative 61 releases, [tss˛ ˇ].‹ ˇ ts ˇs˛‹ ‹ dzz

2.3.7 Soft palatal fricatives The sound represented by the letter ≤o≥ derives etymologically from Common Slavic palatalizations (∗ sk before front vowel and ∗ stj); it is also the Russian interpretation of the Church Slavonic reflex of ∗ tj. Earlier it was pronounced with an internal closure: [s˛c˛‹ ‹] or, equivalently, [s˛ˇ t˛‹ s˛].‹ Throughout most of the Russian dialect area, this older pronunciation has lost out to a Muscovite pronunciation in which the internal stop closure has weakened, resulting in a more or less homogeneous long, soft alveo-palatal fricative [s˛
‹ ]: ,j´ho ‘borsch’ [bj´rs˛
‹ ]. In the sociolinguistic survey of the 1960s, [s˛
‹ ] was used by close to 80 percent of speakers born in 1940--49 in ,j´ho and o∫, the most favorable lexical items.62 And although [s˛c˛‹ ‹] is often said to be a Petersburg variant, another survey from the same period had ninety percent of (then) young Leningrad natives born after the war using the national variant [s˛
‹ ].63 In addition to lexical instances of [s˛
‹ ] (,j´ho, etc.), this sound also arises productively in combinations of dental fricatives [s z] with [c˛ ‹].64 Dental fricatives [s z] often assimilate in place of articulation to palatals across prefix and preposition boundaries: ci∫nm ‘suture’ [ss‹ ],‹ c ;tyj´q ‘with the wife’ [zz‹ ],‹ ,tp ;∫hf ‘without fat’ [zz‹ ].‹ These fricatives also assimilate to a following [c˛ ‹] in place of articulation and, since [c˛ ‹] is palatalized, for that feature as well: bcx∫ckbnm ‘calculate’, c x†cnm/ ‘with honor’ [s˛c˛‹ ‹]. As a further stage, the stop closure in the middle of the complex can be lost: [s˛c‹ ˛ ‹] = [s˛ˇ t‹ s˛ ]˛ ‹ > [s˛…]. ‹ Which variant occurs, whether [s˛c˛‹ ‹] or [s˛
‹ ], depends on how cohesive the two units are: the weaker the morphological boundary, and the more lexicalized the combination, the more likely the further stage of [s˛
‹ ] is. By now [s˛
‹ ] is usual in suffixal derivatives (hfccrƒpxbr ‘raconteur’) and in idiomatized prefix--root combinations (cxƒcnmt ‘happiness’, bcx†pyenm ‘disappear’); it is possible with free prefix-root combinations of the type bcx∫ckbnm, hfcxboƒnm ‘clean’, bcxthn∫nm ‘sketch out’, ,tcx†cnysq ‘dishonorable’. In the 1960s, on the order of 10 to 20 percent of all speakers surveyed used [s˛
‹ ],65 and it is not uncommon now for speakers under forty. Loss of closure is rare with preposition and noun, though it occurs in idiomatic combinations: 61 62 63 64

Trubetzkoy (1975:182), however, allows that these distinctions are blurred in allegro style. Krysin 1974:100. ´ Ivanovna-Lukianova 1971. Similar observations in Baranova 1971, Drage 1968:377--79. 65 Krysin 1974:102--3. And in principle palatal fricatives [s ‹ z]‹ , as in gtht,†;xbr.

65

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

c xtkjd†rjv ‘with a person’ [s˛c˛‹ ‹], c x†cnm/ ‘with honor’ [s˛c˛‹ ‹] ∼ ±[s˛…], ‹ and idiomatic c xtuj´ ‘why, from what’ [s˛c˛‹ ‹] ∼ [s˛…]. ‹ It is difficult to assign an unambiguous phonemic analysis to [s˛
‹ ] if one expects to define a set of features that distinguish it invariantly from all other sounds.66 What necessary property would distinguish [s˛
‹ ] from [s]? ‹ If [s˛
‹ ] were viewed as the soft counterpart of [s],‹ one might expect [s]‹ to become [s˛
‹ ] before the {-e} of ∗ ∗ the (dative-)locative. It does not: j rfhfylfi† [s†], ‹ not [s˛
‹ e5]⁄ or [s˛e5‹ ].⁄ Further, [s˛
‹ ] is often phonetically long, and it conditions a vowel in the imperative (hßcrfnm ‘roam’, imv hßob; vj´hobnm ‘pucker’, imv vj´hob), as is characteristic of clusters. Defining [s˛
‹ ] as the soft counterpart of [s]‹ would not motivate its characteristic length. But length cannot be its necessary property, because the length sometimes disappears. As a third possibility, it might be tempting to think that [s˛
‹ ] in general derives from a cluster -- from [sc˛ ‹] or [sc˛‹ ‹] or, with an abstract fricative, from [Sc˛ ‹], inasmuch as [s˛
‹ ] arises productively from clusters of dental or palatal fricative and [c˛ ‹] (hfccrƒpxbr). This analysis violates invariance in another way. It is usually assumed that [c˛ ‹] differs from [s]‹ by not being continuous. If all [s˛
‹ ] derive from [c˛ ‹], then [c˛ ‹] has an allophone [s˛]‹ which is continuous, in violation of this invariant property. There seems to be no analysis which would not violate one or another axiom of structuralist phonemics and, accordingly, no option other than simply restating the facts: [s˛
‹ ] is a soft alveo-palatal fricative; it is historically a long consonant, though it sometimes shortens; it does not form a canonical pair with [s];‹ and it can arise from combinations of fricatives with [c˛ ‹]. Superficially parallel to [s˛
‹ ], there is also a voiced [z˛ ‹
], which, however, differs in certain respects.67 With [s˛
‹ ], softness is maintained in all contexts, regardless of whether length is maintained. In contrast, the soft pronunciation of [z˛ ‹
] is yielding to a hard pronunciation [z
‹ ], on a lexeme-by-lexeme basis. In the 1960s, [z˛ ‹
] was used by over half of the speakers of all ages in lhj´;;b ‘yeast’, the word with the greatest incidence of [z˛ ‹
], after which came ,hßp;tn ‘gush’, dbp;ƒnm ‘squeal’ (a third), then †p;e ‘I drive’, gj´p;t ‘later’ (a quarter), and finally vj;;td†kmybr ‘juniper’ (15%).68 Nowadays [z˛ ‹
] is quite limited among speakers under forty. Included in the set of relevant words should also be lj´;lm ‘rain’, gen sg lj;lz´ (likewise, dj´;lm ‘leader’, dj;lz´), which allows either this pronunciation (that is, [z˛ ‹
] or, with devoicing, [s˛
‹ ]) or one with a palatal fricative and dental stop (that is, [z˛ ‹d˛] or devoiced [s˛t‹ ]˛ ). The pronunciation with a stop has become usual; only a fifth of speakers surveyed still used [z˛ ‹
] in the 1960s.69 In the most explicit register, [s˛
‹ ] is generally pronounced with length, but it is often shortened to [s˛].‹ Table 2.8 lists most environments. The table suggests the following observations. Intervocalic position () preserves length. (A sonorant intervening between a vowel and post-vocalic [s˛
‹ ] does 66 69

67 Zinder 1989. 68 Krysin 1974:85. See Avanesov 1948, Panov 1967, Flier 1980. Avanesov transcribes it with a hard fricative. Jones and Ward (1969:142) imply [z˛d¸‹ ].

Sounds

Table 2.8 Degemination of [s˛
‹ ]





context

pronunciation

(possible) syllable structure

/V /# ´ /V /V* ´ /V /V* /VC/

[s˛s˛‹ ]‹ [s˛s˛‹ ]‹ [s˛s˛‹ ]‹ ∼ ± [s˛]‹ ±[s˛s˛‹ ]‹ ∼ [s˛]‹ ±[s˛s˛‹ ]‹ ∼ [s˛]‹ [s˛]‹ [s˛]‹

Vs˛.s˛ ‹ V ‹ .s˛s˛‹ V ‹ Vs˛s˛‹ .‹ Vs˛s˛‹ .‹ Vs˛.s˛ ‹ CV ‹ Vs˛.s˛ ‹ CV ‹ VC.s˛s˛‹ V ‹

V V # # CV CV V

± = less acceptable variant

not shorten it: yjc∫kmobr ‘porter’ [l˛s
˛ ‹ ], j,vƒyobr ‘deceiver’ [n˛ s˛
‹ ].70 ) Length is also preserved in absolute initial, prevocalic position (). Before a following consonant ([n] or [n˛ ]), length is often lost: , ,tcgj´vjoysq ‘helpless’ [s˛n˛‹ ], xelj´dboysq ‘monstrous’ [s˛n˛‹ ], though its length may be preserved after a stressed vowel: bpz´oysq ‘elegant’ [s˛
‹ n] ∼ ±[s˛n˛‹ ]. A preceding obstruent shortens [s˛
‹ ]: ufhlthj´,obr ‘cloakroom attendant’ [ps˛],‹ ,hfrj´dobr ‘sorter’ [fs˛].‹ In absolute final, post-vocalic position, length is also vulnerable: njdƒhbo ‘comrade’ [s˛
‹ ] ∼ ±[s˛],‹ gj´vjom ‘help’ [s˛
‹ ] ∼ ±[s˛],‹ though less so after a stressed vowel: vj´om ‘might’ [s˛
‹ ].71 These regularities might at first glance seem to follow from syllable structure. Context suggests length is preserved when [s˛
‹ ] is ambisyllabic between vowels, and context suggests length is preserved in syllable-onset position, while suggest that the coda position is less than ideal. Up to this point the distribution is consistent with principles of syllable structure. But if is ambisyllabic [Vs˛.‹ s˛n ‹ V], [s˛n ‹ V] should be an acceptable onset, yet length tends to be lost. In , length is lost despite the fact that the cluster could ˛ ‹ ]. In fact, in and it does not be in syllable-onset position, as [VC.s˛s‹ V matter which syllable [s˛
‹ ] belongs to. The constraint is whether [s˛
‹ ] is adjacent to another consonant. The adjacency of another consonant -- regardless of its syllable allegiance -- is sufficient to shorten [s˛
‹ ]. The regularities of Table 2.8 do not follow from syllable structure.

2.3.8 Geminate consonants Clusters of identical consonants, as they are written in the orthography, are likely to be simplified in speech, depending on various factors: tempo, register, familiarity of the word, the ability of the geminate cluster to occur in native Russian words. When geminates arise at the boundary between prefix and root, 70 71

According to Avanesov 1972. Panov 1967 transcribes such words with [s˛]‹ . Avanesov 1972 has length here, Jones and Ward (1969:139) shortness.

67

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A Reference Grammar of Russian

they are normally maintained. At internal boundaries, only [nn] and [ss] occur. Geminate spellings involving most consonants occur in foreign borrowings, and then the gemination may or may not be maintained in pronunciation.72 Certain segments tolerate gemination more readily than others. Geminate [rr] is quite unlikely. Geminate stops occur occasionally (uhéggf ‘group’ 55%, [jrr†q ‘hockey’ 34%). Geminate [ss], [nn], [mm], and [ll] are the most likely. With respect to position in the word, geminates are best maintained between vowels, and they are maintained better following a stressed vowel than following an unstressed vowel. Compare: vƒccf ‘mass’ (88%), rƒccf ‘cashier’ (85%), rjv∫ccbz ‘commission’ (48%) as opposed to rkfcc∫xtcrbq ‘classic’ (44%), ,fcc†qy ‘pool’ (44%). In fact, no less of a native informant (and phonologist) than Trubetzkoy wrote in a letter to Jakobson that geminate [n
] was possible only after stressed vowels; the sequence would be shortened after unstressed vowels.73 In word-final position after a vowel, geminates are often simplified but can be maintained (nom sg rƒccf ‘cashier’ 85% [s
] vs. gen pl rƒcc 52% [s
]). Before a following consonant (in the context VCi Ci Cj V), geminates are lost, as is sometimes reflected in spelling: jgth†nnf ‘operetta’ but jgth†nrf, héccrbq [sk], dim uhéggrf [pk], dim ghjuhƒvvrf [mk].74 Just as with [s˛
‹ ], if a potential geminate is adjacent to another consonant, it loses length. In general, maintaining gemination (including [s˛
‹ ]) requires an environment which grants a large measure of duration to the interval of obstruents. Intervocalic position, when the geminate is supported on both sides by vocalic intervals, is more favorable to maintaining gemination than absolute initial (prevocalic) position. Both are more favorable to geminates than absolute final (post-vocalic) position. Position adjacent to an obstruent is inferior. Position after a stressed vowel favors maintaining the geminate.

2.3.9 Voicing of consonants In Russian some obstruents are voiced, some voiceless. Voiced obstruents such as [d], [g], [z˛ ] are produced with the vocal cords taut and therefore vibrating through much of the duration of the obstruent -- in Russian, voiced stops are voiced through more of their duration than voiced stops in English.75 Voiceless consonants such as [t], [k], [s˛ ] are produced with spread vocal cords that do not vibrate. Almost all obstruents come in pairs that differ only by voicing. Both kinds of obstruents can occur in the context before vowels and distinguish words: ,∫nm [b˛ ] ‘be’ vs. g∫nm [p] ‘drink’, l†kj [d˛ ] ‘matter’ vs. n†kj [t˛] ‘body’. 72 73 75

Avanesov 1972:128--38, statistics from Glovinskaia 1976. Kuz mina 1976 treats the related problem of simplification in consonant clusters. 74 SRIa 1.107--8. Trubetzkoy 1975:237. Initial [d] is voiced in English only 60 percent of its duration, Russian [d] 90 percent (Heffner 1964:130).

Sounds

The obstruents [c c ‹ x] are normally voiceless, though they do become voiced preceding a voiced obstruent within a minimal domain: jn†w ,ßk ‘father was’ > [Zb], nrƒx ,ßk ‘the weaver was’ > [Z˛‹b], ktx,ƒ ‘healing’ [Z˛‹b], lde[ly†dysq ‘two-day’ [
d˛ n˛]. The voiced phones [Z Z˛‹
] do not normally occur before vowels by themselves.76 (Historically, [
], a Slavonic pronunciation, could occur autonomously, in certain lexical items such as ,kfuj- ‘well-’, [tl˛] vs. lk∫yysq ‘long’ [dl˛], gm÷ ‘I drink’ > [pj] vs. ,m÷ ‘I beat’ [b˛ j]. Before a vowel, the two members of the small class of W, voiced labio-dental approximates [v v˛ ], also allow both voiced and voiceless obstruents to precede (ldj∫[ ‘a pair’ [dv] vs. ndj∫[ ‘your’ [tv]), just as sonorants do. The distribution is recursive, so that a series of these sounds (sonorants R or W) before a vowel permit obstruents of either type: jn vyj´ujuj ‘from much’ [tmn] vs. gjl vyj´ubv ‘under much’ [dmn], 76 77

As emerges below, the relationship of /f f˛/ to /v v˛ / is not the same as that between /b˛ / and /p/, and it might be justified to include /f f˛/ in the list of consonants that are unpaired for voicing. Browman and Goldstein (1986[a], [b]) argue that voiceless consonants in English and French are marked by an active “glottal closing-and-opening gesture,” gestures which voiced stops lack.

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hfpdhfn∫nm ‘dissipate’ [zvr] vs. jndhfn∫nm ‘repel’ [tvr]. In this respect the class W behaves like sonorants. Russian has two syntagmatic rules of voicing that apply obligatorily and almost exclusively to obstruents: voicing assimilation and word-final devoicing. Within a sequence of obstruents, all obstruents must have the same voicing as the last segment of the sequence; for example, the sound corresponding to ≤;≥ is voiceless [s]‹ before voiceless [k] in yj´;rf ‘knife [dim]’ (it surfaces as [z]‹ only in the gen pl yj´;tr), while the sounds corresponding to ≤c≥ and ≤nm≥ are voiced in gfcnm,ƒ ‘pasturage’ [z˛ (d˛ )b]. Viewed in terms of gestures, voicing assimilation is the constraint that no boundary of voicelessness can fall between obstruents; voicelessness cannot begin between the two obstruents of yj´;rf ∗ [zk], nor can ‹ the end of voicelessness fall in the middle of the obstruent interval of gfcnm,ƒ ∗ [s˛ (t˛)b]. Voicing assimilation is thought to apply without exception within words and at the boundaries of prefixes or prepositions and words: jn,∫k ‘repelled’ [db˛ ], c ,†htuf ‘from the shore’ [zb˛ ], gjlgbcƒnm ‘sign’ [tp], l†drf ‘wench’ [fk]. Assimilation is usual before enclitics beginning with voiced obstruents (lj´xm ,s ‘daughter might’ [Z˛‹b], jn†w ;t ‘father indeed’ [Zz],‹ dj´n ,s ‘well now’ [db]), possible but not obligatory in compounds (gfhn,bk†n ‘party card’ [tb˛ ] ∼ [db˛ ]), and occasional between independent words, at least in close syntagms (and with connotations of colloquial register): yƒi pyfvty∫nsq (r∫tdcrbq nj´hn) ‘our famous (Kiev tort)’ [zz], ‹ rjy†w uj´lf ‘end of the year’ [cg] ∼ [Zg], vƒnm c ltnmv∫ ‘mother with children’ [t˛z˛d˛] ∼ [d˛ z˛d˛], lj´xm dljdß ‘daughter of a widow’ [c˛ ‹vd] ∼ [Z˛‹vd], nhélyjcnm pfrk/xƒkfcm ‘difficulty consisted of’ [s˛ (t˛)z] ∼ [z˛ (d˛ )z], pé, ,jk∫n ‘tooth hurts’ [pb] ∼ [bb], lj´xm ,skƒ ‘daughter was’ [c˛ ‹b] ∼ [Z˛‹b], jn†w ,ßk ‘father was’ [cb] ∼ [Zb].78 When assimilation occurs, it appears that there is neutralization. That is, a lexical [s], when voiced, is identical to a lexical [z], and conversely, a lexical [d˛ ], when devoiced, is identical to [t˛].79 Final devoicing pushes the beginning of voicelessness as far back into the word from the end of the word as possible. Thus the sound corresponding to ≤lm≥ in ntnhƒlm is voiceless [t˛ìtra5⁄ t˛], and, by voicing assimilation, the onset of voicelessness is pushed back to include both obstruents in udj´plm ‘nail’: [gvo5⁄ s˛ t˛ ]. Devoicing occurs without exception in phrase-final position, normally in the first word of a phrase consisting of two independent words (l†l ei=k ‘grampa left’ [t], nhél k/l†q ‘labor of people’ [tl˛]), usually but not always at the end of a word 78 79

Some information is given in Paufoshima and Agaronov 1971. There are still questions to be investigated in the phonetics of consonants participating in voicing rules. Drage 1968 noted some occasional exceptions to the rules. Barry (1988) considered the possibility that final devoiced obstruents maintain some properties characteristic of voiced consonants, but does not find consistent evidence of a phonetic difference. Burton and Robblee (1997), examining assimilation, found that consonants neutralize.

Sounds

before a clitic beginning with a sonorant or a vowel (l†l e; ‘grampa already’ [t], pé, kb ‘the tooth?’ [pl˛]). Primary prepositions maintain voicing before sonorants and vowels (gjl kƒvgjq ‘under the lamp’ [dl], ,tp vyj´ub[ ‘without many’ [zmn]). However, root and prefixal prepositions have a stressed vowel, marking them as autonomous words (,k∫p ‘near’, crdj´pm ‘through’, ghj´nbd ‘against’, dck†l ‘following’), and their final consonants devoice: crdj´pm k†c ‘through the forest’ [s˛ l]˛ . As noted, sonorants (R) and labio-dental approximates (W) are normally voiced. However, they are not completely inert with respect to voicing rules. W is less inert than sonorants. The relevant contexts are these. V #: In final open position after a vowel, the two members of W devoice and become identical to the voiceless obstruents [f f˛]: rhj´d ‘roof’ [f], rhj´dm ‘blood’ [f˛]. Sonorants, in contrast to W, are expected to remain voiced. Yet devoicing, partial or complete, occurs, [r˛] being the most susceptible: rj´hm ‘measles’ > [ko5r⁄ ˛] . . . [ko5rˇ ⁄ ˛rü]˛ . . . [ko5rü⁄ ].˛ (It is convenient to write the ligature sign to indicate a consonant of normal duration over which some feature such as voicing changes its value.) Sonorants may devoice partially after a vowel before a final voiceless obstruent, as in c†hg ‘sickle’ and c†h, ‘Serb’ [rr üp]. ˇ VC/ #: After a preceding voiceless obstruent at the end of a word, final sonorants are usually devoiced: ntƒnh ‘theater’ [a⁄trü].80 After a previous voiced obstruent, the sonorant may acquire an anaptyctic vowel (hé,km ‘ruble’ [bəl˛]).81 Or, in less than standard speech, it may devoice, partially ([blˇ]) 3lü˛ ˛ or completely ˛ and then pass on voicelessness to the preceding obstruent (([plü]),), ˛ ([blü]), and (in dialects) even be identified as an obstruent: [zÈs˛ ‹ t]˛ for ;∫pym ‘life’. In this context, the constraint of final devoicing attempts to move the onset of voicelessness back towards the margin of the previous vocalic domain, in the process potentially affecting a sonorant. When W follows an obstruent at word end, both the W and the obstruent apparently devoice: [jhéudm ‘banner’ [kf˛], nh†pd ‘sober’, h†pd ‘frisky’, vyj´uj z´pd ‘many sores’ [sf].82 C CV: Internally between obstruents, W behaves as an obstruent. It participates in voicing assimilation: when W precedes a voiced obstruent, a previous obstruent remains voiced (gjl dljdj´q ‘under the widow’ [dvd]) or becomes voiced (r dljd† ‘to the widow’ [gvd]). Before a voiceless obstruent, W devoices and passes 80 81 82

Jones and Ward 1969:189, Matusevich 1976:188, 198, SRIa 1.105--6. See Reformatskii 1971, Liubimova 1975, Barry 1989, Flier 1990, 1993, with references. But according to Reformatskii (1975), devoicing is not complete: though the W of vyj´uj z´pd is devoiced, the preceding /z/ can remain partially voiced ([ˇ zsf]) or fully voiced ([zf]). At the same time, a /z/ before an /f/ is said to devoice, in an abbreviation concocted by Reformatskii: ZPA. If so -- if [ˇ zsf], [zf], or [zv] is pronounced in z´pd instead of [sf] -- it would show simply that the behavior of W in this position is not completely that of an obstruent.

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on voicelessness to a preceding obstruent, which remains voiceless (jn dnjhj´uj ‘from the second’ [tft]) or becomes voiceless (gjl dnjhßv ‘under the second’ [tft]). In this context, W forms part of an extended obstruental interval that does not permit changes in voicing within the interval. With sonorants between obstruents, it is possible to insert an anaptyctic vowel and make the sonorant syllabic, in which case the sonorant can accept boundaries of voicelessness. The interesting question -- a question on which there is some disagreement -- is what happens if the sonorant does not become syllabic. Four sub-contexts can be distinguished. D D: Between voiced obstruents, sonorants remain voiced, and may become syllabic: gjl km;∫dsv ‘under false’ [dl˛(ə)z].‹ T D: After a voiceless and before a voiced obstruent, sonorants most probably leave the preceding voiceless obstruent untouched, whether or not they acquire an anaptyctic vowel: jn kml∫ys ‘from the ice-floe’ [øt(ə)l˛d˛¸nï], ⁄ Gh;tdƒkmcrbq [p(ə)rz].‹ There is, however, some uncertainty on this point, discussed below. D T: After a voiced obstruent before a voiceless one, a range of variants is possible. In, for example, vélhcndjdfnm: ‘act wise’, both obstruent and sonorant rüstv] or can maintain voice ([drstv]), or the sonorant can devoice partially ([drˇ completely ([drüstv]), or both can devoice, as is not uncommon in jrnΩ,hmcrbq [pr˛üsk˛ ]. The sonorant may be lost. If the sonorant acquires an anaptyctic vowel, as is possible at preposition boundaries, the obstruent is unaffected: bp K[ƒcs [zəlx]. T T: Between voiceless obstruents, the sonorant is hemmed in by voicelessness on both sides without the aid of a supporting vowel. The sonorant can insert an anaptyctic vowel, as it does usually at a prefix boundary: jn MXATf ‘from MKhAT’ [øtəmxa⁄ t´]. Or it can devoice, creating a single extended in˛ ]). terval of voicelessness without internal shifts in voicing (Ceghƒckmcrbq [slüsk˛ Or it may be lost altogether. The behavior of W and sonorants, especially in these environments, has generated something of a controversy about the nature of the voicing rules. It is Jakobson who is credited with first observing the unusual behavior of W in particular.83 In his original article in 1956, Jakobson characterized the voicing rule so that the final obstruent in a cluster was held wholly responsible. Assimilation occurs between two obstruents, “regardless of whether one follows directly after the other or v comes between them.” On this view, W is a permeable membrane that transmits voicing from a following obstruent to a preceding one. 83

Jakobson 1956/1971[a]. On Jakobson’s treatment of W in this position, see Shapiro 1966. Shapiro 1993 provides an overview of the problem of voicing.

Sounds

The subsequent tradition saw in Jakobson’s observation the possibility that W is to be classified as a sonorant. One hypothesis was that W is intrinsically a sonorant that becomes an obstruent in weak environments, when it merges with [f f˛].84 This solution maintains the assumption that active participation in voicing rules is limited exactly to the class of obstruents; true sonorants would have to be excluded on this account. Another tack was to ask whether true sonorants behave the same as W in the vicinity of obstruents.85 Sheveroshkin, citing Gh;tdfkmcrbq, states that “voicing of p- does not occur It can hardly be suggested that the sonorant [r] is syllabic.” He notes that, in bp K[fcs, devoicing is possible, provided the [l] itself devoices: [sl x]. Zalizniak (1975) claims that sonorants generally do not transmit ˆ voicing, even if they remain non-syllabic. He states categorically that a voiceless obstruent does not become voiced across an intervening sonorant in assimilation to a voiced obstruent. Thus Tsvetaeva’s line pfcnhf[jdfyyjcnm эnb[ k,jd ‘insurability of these foreheads’ could only be pronounced without assimilation as [xlb], never with assimilation as ∗ [
lb]. If so, sonorants differ from W or obstruents, which would affect a preceding consonant in this combination: …nb[ dlj´d ‘of these widows’ [
vd], …nb[ ly†q ‘of these days’ [
d˛ n˛ ]. Zalizniak mentions that if the following obstruent is voiceless, voicing assimilation -- devoicing -could occur. After the appearance of these studies, Jakobson responded by pushing the parallelism between W and sonorants. In his last summary discussion (1978/1985), he insisted that voicing assimilation is passed through sonorants, both when the obstruent after the sonorant is voiceless (bp Vw†ycrf ‘from Mtsensk’ [smc]) and, remarkably, when the obstruent after the sonorant is voiced ([dl˛d˛] in jn kml∫ys). (Jakobson does not explicitly say whether the sonorant itself would have to be devoiced before a voiceless obstruent in order to communicate voicelessness; his transcriptions do not indicate that the intervening sonorant is devoiced.) To judge by his examples, sonorants behave like W: they are also permeable membranes that transmit voicing. In extending this property of permeability from W to all sonorants, Jakobson makes a substantive claim that differs from those made in other sources: his r k;∫dsv ckjdƒv ‘to false words’ [glz]‹ and jn kml∫ys [dl˛d˛] seem incompatible with Sheveroshkin’s Gh;tdfkmcrbq [prz]‹ and Zalizniak’s …´nb[ k,j´d [xlb]. While Jakobson claims that there is complete parallelism in the context CRC and CWC regardless of whether the second obstruent is voiced or voiceless, other investigators point to the likelihood that there is an asymmetry in contexts: voicelessness may be passed on, but only if it is imposed on the 84 85

The solution proposed by Andersen (1969) and subsequently reinvented in other places. Es kova 1971:245, Sheveroshkin 1971 (especially 282).

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sonorant; voicing will not be passed through a sonorant to a preceding voiceless obstruent.86 Thus Jakobson’s factual observations differ from those of other commentators.87 To understand voicing, it is useful to think of voicelessness as a feature with a temporal life. Voicing and voicelessness are not entirely symmetrical. Vocalic domains (vowels themselves, and vowels extended by sonorants) are intrinsically voiced.88 Boundaries of voicelessness are tolerated on the margins of vocalic domains and only there; consonantal intervals are either voiced or voiceless throughout with no internal change -- no internal beginning of voicelessness (∗ [VDNV]) and no internal end of voicelessness (∗ [VNDV]). Whether an interval is voiced or voiceless is determined by the last obstruent. Sonorants adjacent to vowels extend the vocalic domain and therefore tolerate adjacent voicelessness. But sonorants are not completely inert in voicing rules. Complications arise when a sonorant is next to a word boundary or is sandwiched between obstruents. In such contexts, the class of W behaves like an obstruent. Unambiguous sonorants -- liquids and nasals -- can do the same if the following environment imposes voicelessness, but they can also act as an autonomous domain and tolerate the cessation of voicelessness immediately preceding them, in the configuration NRD (Gh;tdfkmcrbq, jn kmlbys).

2.4 Phonological variation 2.4.1 General Most -- perhaps all -- phonetic processes in Russian exhibit variation in their application. While each process deserves its own description, the processes are governed by analogous factors. The factors can be grouped into three classes: systemic factors (those motivated by intrinsic properties of the sounds involved); 86

87

88

The assumption that both voicelessness and voicing are passed through sonorants is critical for the theoretical studies of Halle and Vergnaud (1981) and Hayes (1984). Robblee and Burton 1997, examining the duration and amplitude of consonants in clusters in which a sonorant is between two obstruents, could find no instrumental confirmation that voicing is transmitted through sonorants. Kavitskaya (1999), a phonologist from Moscow, states that in her speech there is no assimilation in either context, bp Mw†ycrf ‘from Mtsensk’ or jn kuéymb ‘from a liar’. Jakobson claims (1968/1971[a]) that [f f˛] do not assimilate in word-final position before an enclitic or word beginning with a voiced obstruent: thus uhƒa ;t ‘the graf, though’ remains [fz]‹ , not [vz]‹ . A half century earlier, before any controversy about the status of W had arisen, Cherrnyshev (1908:37) transcribed the phrase rfk∫a ,s´k gj,t;l=y ‘the caliph was defeated’ as rfk∫d ,ßk, indicating voicing assimilation. Though voiceless vowels do occur, the optimal environment being unstressed between voiceless obstruents at word end, e.g., i=gjn [ˇsop´üt] (Panov 1967:131). Jones and Ward (1969:191--92) say that a voiceless vowel occurs “not infrequently,” in contexts adjacent to voiceless obstruents, such as dßcnfdrf ‘exhibition’, x†htg ‘skull’, l†deitr ‘girls’ [gen pl].

Sounds

factors of idiomaticity (those having to do with the morphological and lexical constraints on processes); and sociostylistic factors.

2.4.2 Phonological variation: idiomaticity Variation depends in large measure on the extent to which the given combination of sounds is conventionally pronounced together. The more the two sounds that participate in the change are associated and linked in usage, the more likely they are to show the effects of phonetic interaction. This factor might be termed the criterion of i d i o m a t i c i t y . The most familiar aspect of idiomaticity is the hierarchy of morphological “boundaries.” By measuring the degree of cohesion vs. autonomy of constituent units, boundaries in effect measure syntagmatic idiomaticity. As is familiar, the weaker the boundary, the more likely it is that segments on either side of the boundary will interact. As a consequence, phonological processes apply most readily within morphemes, a little less regularly across boundaries of derivational suffixes, less across inflectional boundaries, and with decreasing willingness across prefix, preposition, and word boundaries.89 Most processes in Russian are sensitive to boundaries, though the cut-off points are different for different processes. Processes are summarized in Table 2.9, in which boundaries are listed from weak to strong along the horizontal axis, and processes are listed along the vertical axis from restricted to general. There is no reason to think that boundaries are becoming more prominent or less prominent over time; there is no single direction of development. Any rule can be sensitive to boundaries, whether it is expanding or receding. The generalization is that, as a rule changes -- whether it expands or recedes -- it will expand or be maintained better when weak rather than strong boundaries intervene between the sounds that interact. The change whereby [c˛ ‹] loses closure in clusters of [s] plus [c˛ ‹], resulting in [s˛ˇ
], is regular at suffix boundaries, but less regular at prefixes and uncommon with prepositions. Palatalization assimilation has been disappearing. Its retrenchment has been following the hierarchy of boundaries. Assimilation, even for Avanesov, was unlikely between preposition and head word; it was somewhat more likely at prefix boundary, and regular only within morphemes. Palatalization of velars before {i e} applies within words and across inflectional boundaries (between stems and inflectional endings), herƒ ‘hand’ [kƒ], gen sg her∫ [k˛´ı], but normally does not cross preposition or word boundaries: r ∫vtyb ‘to the name’ [k˝!]. The alternation of [i] and [˝!] is less restricted; it crosses prefixes (csuhƒnm ‘play’ [sÈ]) and prepositions (jn ∫vtyb ‘from the name’ [t˝!]) and, not 89

Shapiro 1967.

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Table 2.9 Boundaries and variation

CC ¸>C ¸C ¸ (current) CC ¸>C ¸C ¸ (older) {Ki} > [Ki] ˛ {s˛c˛‹ }‹ > [s˛
]‹ {sc˛}‹ > [s˛c˛‹ ]‹ {s z}{ˇs ˇz} > [ˇs
ˇz
] {Co i} > [Co È] { C/ C/ } > [ C/ C/ ] $ ˇ ˇˇ

internal √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √

derivation

inflection

± √ √ √ √ √ √ √

? ± √ n.a. n.a. √ √ √

prefix

preposition

enclitic

word

∗

∗

± n.a. ± √ √ √ √

? ∗

∗ ∗

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

? √ √ √ √

n.a. n.a. n.a. √ √ √

? ± ±

√

= process applies regularly, without restriction ± = process applies less frequently, with some restrictions ? = process applies exceptionally, with significant restrictions ∗ = process does not apply n.a. = not applicable

infrequently, occurs between closely linked words within a phrase (i=k buhƒnm ‘went to play’ [lÈ]). Assimilation of [s z] to [s˛ˇ] before [c˛‹] or to [s ‹ z]‹ before root [s ‹ z]‹ is regular across prefixes and prepositions and can occur between words in a phrase (vjhj´p ;=cnrbq ‘a harsh frost’ [z
‹ ]). Voicing assimilation easily crosses the boundary between words within phrases. Variation is affected by other considerations that are, however, difficult to encode as boundaries. Processes apply to words to the extent that the conditions for a process are present in all forms of the paradigm of the word, inflectional and sometimes derivational. Palatalization assimilation is less likely if the trigger consonant is palatalized only in some forms. Palatalization is less likely in d ,∫ndt ‘in battle’ (only [tv˛ ]), because [v˛ ] is palatalized only in certain cases, than in uniformly palatalized d†ndb ‘branches’ (possible [t˛v˛]).90 How regularly a process applies may depend on the relationship between a particular form and the rest of the morphological paradigm to which it belongs. The zero ending -- a fecund environment for changes, since consonants are not supported by a following vowel -- exhibits different effects depending on which “zero” it is. For example, geminates are often maintained in the genitive plural (gen pl vƒcc [mƒs
] ‘of the masses’), because the genitive plural is under paradigmatic pressure from other weighty members of the paradigm in which a vowel follows (nom sg vƒccf [mƒs
ə]). Geminates are often lost in the nominative singular, a more autonomous form which is less subject to pressure from forms with vowels (nom sg rjyuh†cc [s] ‘congress’, not ∗ [s
]). 90

Krysin 1974:61 cites 13 percent for d†ndb but an even paltrier 5 percent for d ,∫ndt.

Sounds

The paradigm of verbal forms has less cohesion among its forms than the declension of nouns. Palatalized labials are well maintained before the zero ending of the nominative singular of nouns, because in the rest of the paradigm the labial is before a vowel and is palatalized: palatalized [p] in uj´ke,m ‘dove’ is supported by [b˛ ə] in uj´ke,z . Palatalized labials are beginning to be lost in the imperative in the substandard register: ghbujnj´dmnt ‘prepare!’ standard [f˛], substandard [f], even despite the fact that there are other forms with palatalized labials in prevocalic position (inf ghbujnj´dbnm, 2sg ghbujnj´dbim). In the masculine singular of the past tense of verbs, [l] was lost after fricatives: ∗ nesl(> y=c, ∗ vezl(> d=p. Analogous phonological combinations have been maintained in nouns (sometimes by insertion of a vowel): cvßck ‘sense’, éptk ‘knot’ because related forms have following vowels (gen sg cvßckf, gen sg épkf). Again, the zero form of nouns underwent less extreme change than the zero form in verbs because this context in nouns is better integrated in a paradigm of forms. In many of these processes the target (the segment that is potentially affected) is situated before a boundary in either case; the context is syntagmatically the same. What is different is the paradigmatic context: the allegiance of the particular word form to other word forms. A process is retarded when a word form with the proper phonological context is related to other word forms lacking the phonological context for the process. The principle at work here is the paradigmatic analog of the syntagmatic constraint of boundaries. A word or morpheme will try to remain uniform and not change its shape, even down to the level of the allophonic shape of the segments of which it is composed. To the extent that two otherwise independent units are conventionally pronounced together, their autonomy is overridden. On both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes, rules apply to the extent that the proper phonological context is regular, conventional, idiomatic.

2.4.3 Phonological variation: systemic factors Speech results from various articulatory gestures, scripted in time. Though gestures often line up to define segments (for example, [m˛] involves almost simultaneous labial closure, raising of the tongue, and opening of the velum), each articulatory gesture has its own profile in time. Assimilation is just the spread of a gesture across segments. Speech is evidently composed of alternations of vocalic domains and consonantal interludes. Consonantal interludes require sanctioning from the vocalic domain. As a consonant cluster grows in complexity, the presence of additional consonants reduces the duration available for other adjacent consonants in the same interlude. As noted in the discussion of vowel duration, vowels are shorter before multiple consonants than before single consonants, and shorter before

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single obstruents than before no obstruent. These facts suggest that consonants have a negative valence -- they remove duration from the vocalic interval. Similarly, voicelessness and stop articulations (both involving energetic and precipitous gestures) remove duration.91 Vowels vary in duration as a function of stress.92 Stress also affects nearby consonants. The general principle is that stress sanctions extra length in the vowels themselves and also extra duration in adjacent consonants, both before and after the vowel. The variation of [i ∼ È] sometimes crosses between words, when one word ends in a hard consonant and the next begins with {i}. Matusevich says explicitly that the pronunciation of [È], which involves assimilation of the vowel to the hard consonant of the preceding word, is more common when the vowel is unstressed (bl=n B´h∫yf ‘there goes Irina’ [tï]) than when the vowel is stressed (bl=n B´hf ‘there goes Ira’ [tí] ∼ [t˝!]). Normally in Russian, consonants are palatalized before {e}, though borrowings allow non-palatalized consonants. The consonant is able to avoid palatalization before {e} in borrowings more readily when the vowel is stressed than when it is unstressed.93 The extra duration of stressed vowels allows more distinctions in the transitions between consonants and vowels, and in particular allows either a palatalizing transition (with raised F2 ) or a non-palatalizing transition (with low F2 ); unstressed vowels, with greater cohesion between the vowel and consonant, as a rule allow only the palatalizing transition. The glide [j] is said to have two allophones, a more consonantal [j] as opposed to a less consonantal [i8]. The more consonantal [j] occurs before stressed vowels, because the glide has more time for elaboration before stressed vowels than before unstressed. Also, [j] tends to be absorbed before the homorganic vowel [i]. It is less likely to be absorbed before a stressed [í], because a stressed vowel allows more time for an elaborate transition: stressed cdbym∫ gen sg ‘pig’ > [n˛ jí] ∼ ±[n˛ 8ií] but unstressed kuéymb gen sg ‘liar’ > [n˛ ì] ∼ ±[n˛ 8iì]. Vowels that are stressed permit more elaborated transitions between consonant and vowel. Stress also affects consonants in post-vocalic position, especially when they are not also prevocalic. Gemination -- maintaining a single articulatory configuration over an extended time -- is permissible to the extent that extra duration is sanctioned by adjacent vowels. Stressed vowels sanction more duration 91

92

Browman and Goldstein (1986[a]) examined duration in C∗ VC complexes (C∗ = a singleton, doubleton, or three-consonant cluster) in English and documented that there is a constant duration measured from the temporal center of the C∗ through the vowel to the onset of the post-vocalic singleton consonant. If the interval from the temporal center of the cluster to the end of the vowel yields a stable value, then as the consonant cluster increases in complexity and duration, it must do so at the expense of the vowel. 93 Glovinskaia 1976. Bondarko, Verbitskaia, and Zinder 1960.

Sounds

(rightward) in the following consonantal interlude than do unstressed vowels, and hence ghjbpytc=yysq ‘pronounced’ is more likely to have a geminate [nn] than jnj´hdfyysq ‘torn off’. Palatalized labials, endangered when no vowel follows, are better maintained after stressed vowels: c†vm ‘seven’ [s˛ö†öm˛] but dj´ctvm ‘eight’ [vo5s⁄ ˛ ìm]. In palatalization assimilation, palatalization is better preserved after a stressed vowel than otherwise, hence better preserved in gj´lkt ‘alongside of’, in Avanesov’s norm [po5d⁄ ˛ l˛ì] ∼ [pj´dl˛ì], than in ,jlk∫dsq ‘prone to butting’, only [bdl˛ívÈi8]. Thus, stressed vowels sanction greater duration both in prevocalic consonants and in post-vocalic consonants. Position preceding a vowel gets more duration than position after. It might appear that these effects could be described by appealing to syllables. There is more than one algorithm for determining syllable structure. The major point of difference concerns what to do with multiple consonants between vowels, which may be assigned all to the following vowel or split between the preceding and the following syllable according to some principle. Avanesov 1956, for example, allows closed syllables only when a sonorant precedes an obstruent: compare closed rƒhnf [r.t] ‘map’, ljycrj´q [n.sk] ‘of the Don’, but open kj´,pbr ‘fret-saw’ [.bz˛ ], rjulƒ [.gd] ‘when’, jnlƒnm [.dd] ‘gave away’, cjyk∫dsq [.nl˛] ‘drowsy’, lkbyyƒ [.nn] ‘long’ [fem sg]. This approach has the result of minimizing closed syllables. Other approaches, not specific to Russian, might be more tolerant of internal closed syllables of the type VCi .Cj V. Whatever algorithm is invoked, syllable structure does not account for the variation described above. Palatalized labials in the imperative are more likely to be lost in the plural, when a consonant follows (эrjyj´vmnt), than in the singular, when no consonant follows (эrjyj´vm). The palatalized labial (here [m˛]) would be in syllable-coda position in both instances according to any algorithm of syllable structure. If the behavior of sounds were based strictly on the position in syllable structure, [m˛] should behave the same in both forms; the presence of another obstruent after the syllable-final [m˛] should be irrelevant. Palatalized consonants cause a preceding vowel to become more front; they do so whether they belong to the following syllable (gen sg uj´hz ‘grief’ [go5.⁄ r˛ə]) or form the coda of the syllable (e.g., uj´hmrj ‘bitterly’ [go5r⁄ ˛.kə]). Similarly, consonants are labialized in the vicinity of labialized vowels, and this process does not respect syllable boundaries.94 Nor does voicing assimilation. These processes, then, pay no attention to syllable boundaries. Finally, we might consider the algorithm for syllable structure of L. V. Shcherba. According to Shcherba, a syllable coda is possible only after a stressed 94

Bondarko 1977:130--37.

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vowel, as in cdƒlm,f [sva5d⁄ ˛ .bə] ‘wedding’ but not ujym,ƒ [g.n˛ bƒ] ‘pursuit’. Shcherba’s algorithm, because it refers to stress, might seem relevant to the processes discussed above. Shcherba’s algorithm leads to an odd result with respect to assimilations that affect post-vocalic consonants. In palatalization assimilation, for example, if syllable structure were assigned according to Shcherba’s principle, one would expect assimilation to be less regular after stressed vowels, because the post-vocalic consonant would be assigned to the same syllable as the vowel, and not to the following syllable that contains the consonant that is the source of palatalization. Thus one would expect less palatalization in gj´lkt [po5d⁄ .l˛ì] ‘alongside’ than in ,jlk∫dsq [bdl˛ívïi8] ‘prone to butting’. In fact, Avanesov observed the opposite. Also, Shcherba’s algorithm has nothing to say about consonants in the position before vowels, since preceding consonants would be treated as syllable onsets regardless of whether that vowel is stressed. As noted, stress allows more elaboration in consonants preceding vowels. Thus models that rely on syllable structure do not describe the variation that relates to the stress of vowels. We might attempt to describe these facts directly in a temporal model of phonetic interaction. Speech is an alternation of vocalic and consonantal domains. Consonants can be understood as a kind of negative space between the positive articulatory intervals of vowels. Vowels have positive valence proportional to their own duration (at least insofar as duration is a function of stress). The longer the vowel, the more duration is granted to the adjacent consonantal interludes. Consonantal domains are not self-sufficient; they require the support of vocalic domains; they consume duration supplied by vowels. Asymmetrically, consonants get more support from following than from preceding vowels. Consonants have negative valence: they limit the duration available in the context (in adjacent, especially preceding, vowels and in adjacent consonants in either direction). The longer the consonantal interlude, the less duration is available for neighboring vowels. The systemic (phonological) factors that govern variable processes can be formulated in terms of durational valence. Sonorants seem neutral or, possibly, variable. In prevocalic position, sonorants ´ (Cj V) contexts, the initial behave as an extension of the vocalic domain: in Ci RV ´ (Cj V) constressed vowel is nearly as long as the corresponding first vowel in Ci V texts. Further, sonorants in the position before vowels have the same behavior as vowels with respect to voicing -- they tolerate the cessation of voicelessness on their margins. In post-vocalic position, sonorants do not shorten a preceding vowel and they permit a following [s˛ˇ
] more elaboration (j,vƒyobr [n˛ˇs˛
]) than an obstruent in the same position would (ufhlthj´,obr [ps˛ˇ]). Sonorants after vowels, then, extend the vocalic domain.

Sounds

The overall view is that vowels have duration, especially in proportion to stress, and offer duration to surrounding consonants. Consonants consume derivation. Sonorants are more or less neutral; they extend the domain of vowels.

2.4.4 Phonological variation: phonostylistics and Old Muscovite pronunciation For most processes in which there is variation, variants are correlated with different stylistic values: characteristically one variant will be evaluated as conservative and explicit, the other as more casual; variation may be correlated with tempo as well. Moreover, as the sociolinguistic investigations of the 1960s documented repeatedly, the conservative variant is the variant preferred (in statistical terms) by the higher social classes, while the innovative, casual variant is that used (by a statistical margin) by workers. There is a collection of unconnected phonological traits that have been identified in Russian phonological literature as “Old Muscovite” features, features dating back to the residual population of Moscow before the October Revolution of 1917. For the most part, they have been overridden by the national norms of twentieth-century Russian.95 Some Old Muscovite features are the following. In vocalism, a more open vowel, conventionally transcribed [], is used for non-high vowels after hard consonants in first pretonic position rather than []: cnjkß [stl˝!]. Velars in the nominative singular masculine of adjectives remained hard, and after them atonic [ə] is used (nz´;rbq ‘difficult’ [kə8i]); in this instance the Old Muscovite pronunciation is more original; the national norm of [k˛ ] in such adjectives is a spelling pronunciation. The imperfectivizing suffix begins with [ə] (again, without palatalizing a velar) rather than [ï]. Pervasive use of [ï] for orthographic ≤f≥ after ≤i≥ and ≤;≥ is Old Muscovite. In consonantism, maintenance of [z˛ ‹
] in lhj´;;b ‘yeast’ and the like is Old Muscovite. In Old Muscovite pronunciation, a palatalized [r˛] used to occur in the position after {e} before a following consonant. This ancient pronunciation (it derives from a progressive palatalization of the r in ∗ Ci mrCj sequences when Cj was not a hard dental) occurred in words such as d†h[ [v˛ö†ör˛x] ‘top’, g†hdsq [p† öör˛vïi8] ‘first’. Old Muscovite had prevalent spirantization of stops in clusters: in lexical items yj´unb ‘nails’ OM [xt˛], rnj´ ‘who’ OM [xt], rjulƒ ‘when’ OM [
d], and even in combinations of prefixes and lexemes, r lj´ve OM [
d] ‘to the building’. Long ago, [c˛ ‹] lost closure before [n] and was reinterpreted as hard [s].‹ This [sn] ‹ is still maintained in certain high-frequency lexical items such as rjy†xyj ‘of course’ and créxyj ‘boring’, but in general this pronunciation is receding in favor of the new national norm, [c˛ ‹ n]. Thus, older speakers have [sn] ‹ in ,ékjxyfz 95

See Shapiro 1968, Matusevich 1976, Panov 1990.

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‘bakery’, ghƒxtxyfz ‘laundry’, while younger speakers use [c˛‹ n]. (Some words have consistent [c˛ ‹ n]: rbhg∫xysq ‘brick’.) Maintaining [sn] ‹ is a feature of Old Muscovite pronunciation, as speakers are aware. Lidiia Chukovskaia, referring to the word gjlcd†xybrb ‘candlesticks’, exclaimed that Anna Akhmatova “so magnificently pronounces ≤gjlcdtiybrb≥ [= [sn˛‹ ], AT]. I adore that venerable Russian i, which has not been replaced on her lips by modern x.”96

2.5 Morpholexical alternations 2.5.1 Preliminaries Sounds occur only in combination with other sounds in conventionalized, lexical combinations. Related forms of a word or related words share most of the same sounds, but not all. It is then possible to example the correspondences of sounds from one word or word form to another, which can be termed m o r p h o l e x i c a l (or “morphophonemic”) alternations.

2.5.2 Consonant grades Aside from automatic alternations involving voicing, consonant alternations go back to the palatalizations of Slavic and East Slavic. C o n s o n a n t g r a d e s -the different forms consonants can take -- are summarized in Table 2.10. We can define the form of the consonans not affected by any alternation (specifically, by palatalization) as the basic grade, or C0 . There are two major patterns of alternation. Firstly, an alternation of C0 with j C , reflecting the historical first palatalization of velars before ∗ j and iotation of dentals and labials, occurs in verbs of the type {CVC-a : CVCj -|e|}, among which C0 occurs in the past-infinitive stem, Cj in the present stem: gbcƒnm ‘write’, 1sg gbié, 2sg g∫itim and gkƒrfnm ‘cry’, 1sg gkƒxe, 2sg gkƒxtim. Secondly, C0 alternates with Ci , which reflects first palatalization of velars and “bare” palatalization of other consonants before front vowels, within the “middle” forms of the present tense of obstruent stems: compare [s] in 1sg ytcé ‘I carry’ vs. [s˛ ] in 2sg ytc=im or [k] in 1sg gtré ‘I bake’ vs. [c˛ ‹] in 2sg gtx=im. In i-Conjugation verbs, Cj in the first singular and past passive participle alternates with Ci elsewhere: 1sg vjkjxé ‘I thresh’, passive participle -vjkj´xty versus vjkjn∫nm, 2sg vjkj´nbim. It could be noted that Cj and Ci have the same values for velars. Clusters of fricative and stop (= ST) have developed the unique sounds [s˛
‹ z˛ ‹
] (or [ˇz
]: §2.3.7): uhecn∫nm ‘be sad’, 1sg uheoé, gjkjcrƒnm ‘rinse’, 1sg gjkjoé, †plbnm ‘ride’, 1sg †p;e. Ci has been subject to changes that have led to the development of secondary patterns. Many derivational suffixes that now begin with consonants originally 96

Lidiia Chukovskaia, Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi, vol. II (Moscow, 1997), 437.

Sounds

Table 2.10 Consonant grades 

Co

Cj

Ci

Ci

Ci

C


Po ={p b f v m} To ={t d s z} Ko ={k g x} Ro = {n r l} ST = (st sk zd}

Pl˛ {c‹ z‹ s ‹ z}‹ ˇ ={c‹ s ‹ z}‹ C R˛ ={n˛ r˛ l˛} ˇC ˇ = {s˛…‹ s˛…‹ z˛…} S ‹

P˛ T˛ ˇ ={c‹ s ‹ z}‹ C R˛ ={n˛ r˛ l˛}

Po To ˇ ={c‹ s ‹ z}‹ C {n r l˛}

Po T˛ ˇ ={c‹ s ‹ z}‹ C R˛ ={n˛ r˛ l˛}

P˛ T˛ K˛ R˛ ={n˛ r˛ l˛}

began with ∗ m. As a front vowel, ∗ m conditioned palatalization (hence Ci ) in the consonant preceding the suffix before it disappeared, leaving behind a consonant cluster. Palatalization has been restricted in consonants in the position before other consonants, a development which has reduced the scope of Ci and led to an alternative pattern, labeled the Ci grade in Table 2.10. Thus before adjectival {-n-} the consonants are not palatalized in hß,ysq ‘fish’, v†cnysq ‘local’, e,ßnjxysq ‘unprofitable’, ldthyj´q ‘pertaining to a door’. (The exception is [l˛], which is preserved: jnl†kmysq ‘separate’.) As a variation on Ci , labeled  Ci in Table 2.10, palatalization can be maintained in dentals before labials and velars while being lost in dentals before dentals and lost in labials: rjymrƒ (nom sg rjy=r ‘hobbyhorse’), dim z´,kjymrf ‘apple-tree’, [jlm,ƒ ‘walking’, htpm,ƒ ‘carving’, ujym,ƒ ‘pursuit’. In another minor variation on Ci (very restricted, and so not recorded in Table 2.10), the suffix {-sk-}, which conditioned Ci in the consonant preceding the suffix, allows the dental sonorants over and above [l˛] to be palatalized: b÷ymcrbq ‘of June’, jrnz´,hmcrbq ‘of October’, as well as gjhneuƒkmcrbq ‘Portuguese’. This minor pattern would be: {Po , To , {c ‹ s ‹ z}, ‹ R¸}. i These variations on C involve tinkering with how well palatalization is preserved before suffixes beginning with consonants. The original Ci grade has also developed in another direction. The Ci grade of velars, historically palatal consonants, has been yielding to palatalized velars by analogy to palatalized dentals and labials in certain contexts: note substandard dee ,thtuz´ ‘protecting’, standard 2sg nr=im ‘you weave’, substandard ;u=im ‘you burn’, gtr=im ‘you bake’, analogous to ytcz´, ytc=im, uht,z´, uht,=im. This variation on Ci , in which {K ¸} reˇ } while Ci is maintained for dentals and labials, is the pattern used in places {C adjectives formed productively with the suffixes {-icesk-} and {-icn-}. These suf‹ ‹ fixes evoke palatalized velars rather than palatals: gcb[∫xtcrbq ‘psychological’, pjjkju∫xtcrbq ‘zoological’, gtlfuju∫xysq ‘pedagogical’, fyfh[∫xysq ‘anarchic’. In addition to Cj as stated, there is a special variant with the Church Slavonic reflexes of ∗ tj and ∗ dj, a pattern that is not recorded in Table 2.10. The third row would then be {s˛ˇ
zd} (or {[s˛ˇ
zd‹ ¸]}): djpdhfn∫nm/djpdhfoƒnm ‹ ‘return’, gj,tl∫nm/gj,t;lƒnm ‘vanquish’. The statement of alternations in

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Table 2.10 makes no provision for the reflexes of the Slavic second and third palatalization of velars: if the alternation of consonants that derives from these changes had been maintained, there would be a synchronic series {c z (z˛ ) s (s˛ )} corresponding to {k  x}, but the possible alternations resulting from this palatalization have been eliminated.

2.5.3 Types of softness Much in Russian phonology depends on whether consonants are palatalized or not. A notion of softness (to use the informal term) is relevant at different levels. It may be useful to review the role of softness on different levels. The concept in the first place is phonetic. Phonetically soft consonants are those with a certain articulatory configuration. That configuration influences adjacent vowels by co-articulation in the same way in different consonants, and in this effect all phonetically soft consonants are equal. By this criterion [T ¸], [P ¸ ], and [R ¸] are phonetically soft, and so are [c˛ ‹], [s˛:], [z˛
], and [j]. In contrast, ordinary ‹ ‹ [To ], [Po ], [Ko ], and [c s ‹ z]‹ are hard. The pairs [To ] vs. [T ¸] and [Po ] vs. [P ¸ ] are capable of occurring in the same syntagmatic environment and are capable of distinguishing words. In this respect, [T ¸] and [P ¸ ] are phonemically soft. The pair [K ¸] vs. [Ko ] is moving in this direction. Moreover, exactly these sets of consonants are paired in the sense that the hard sounds are replaced by the soft ones before the {-e} of the locative singular of Declension and Declension (and the dative singular of Declension ): ;ty† ‘to the wife’ [n˛ †], j xtkjd†rt [k˛ ì]. The details of stressed vocalism depend on the phonetic softness of consonants. Unstressed vocalism is also sensitive to phonetic softness, but the picture is more complex. In pretonic position in roots, [c] behaves as an ordinary hard consonant with respect to {a} (gen sg wfhz´ [c]). After the unpaired hard consonants [s ‹ z],‹ there is variation between the inherited [ï] (;fk†nm [zï‹ ] ‘pity’) and the innovative [] (;ƒh ‘heat’, ;fhƒ [z]). The innovative [] is what one expects after a hard con‹ sonant. The high quality of [ï] rather than the lower [] is merely a back version of [ì]. By virtue of eliciting this high variant [ï], [s ‹ z]‹ are morphophonemically “soft.” The different criteria for defining softness are summarized in Table 2.11. Softness is additionally relevant in two other places. First, most nouns of Declension use one of two overt endings in the genitive plural. Stems ending in paired hard consonants, including velars, take {-ov}, while stems ending in paired soft consonants take {-ej}. On this basis, one might define any stem-final consonant that takes {-ov} as morphologically hard, and any that takes {-ej} as morphologically soft. The phonemically unpaired consonants [c˛ ‹], [s˛…], ‹ [s ‹ z]‹

Sounds

85

Table 2.11 Types of “softness”

[T˛ ] [p ¸] [K¸] [j] [c] [c¸] [s˛
‹ z
‹ (z˛
)] ‹ [s ‹ z]‹

phonetic softness [C ¸] √ √ √ √ ∗ √ √ ∗

independent (phonemic) softness √ √

morphophonemic softness {a} > [ì] ([ï]) √ √

± ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

n.a. √ ∗ √ √ ±

morphophonemic softness gen pl {-ej} √ √ √ ∗ ∗ √ √ √

morphophonemic softness {∅ ∼ Ci {† ∼ ì}} √ √ n.a. √ √ n.a. n.a. n.a.

√

= counts as soft ∗ = fails to count as soft n.a. = not applicable, indeterminate ± = partial, to some extent soft

take {-ej}, and in this respect are morphologically soft. Curiously, [j] and [c] take {-ov}, making them by this criterion morphologically hard.97 In certain word forms, vowels alternate with the absence of a vowel. The overt vowel can take different forms under stress. One variant (labeled {º ∼ Ci {† ∼ ì}}: §2.5.5) occurs consistently before following paired palatalized consonants: ptv†km ‘land [gen pl]’, htv†ym ‘belt’. It also occurs before [j] (cdby†q ‘pigs [gen pl]’, hex†q ‘brook’ and [c] (jn†w ‘father’, rjy†w ‘end’), which according to this test would be evaluated as morphophonemically soft. (The alternation of vowels does 98 not occur before [c˛ ‹ s˛
‹ s ‹ z].) ‹ Thus, each process defines a set of consonants as soft, but the definitions are not entirely consistent for different processes. A consonant may behave as morphophonemically soft, even if it is not phonetically or phonemically soft in synchronic terms.

2.5.4 Vowel grades Alternations in vowels date from various time periods. The oldest derive from Slavic reflexes of Indo-European ablaut relations. Only residual traces remain of the q ua l i t a t i v e a b l au t of ∗ e and ∗ o (dtpn∫ ‘lead ’, djp∫nm ‘lead ’, 97

98

The motivation is presumably historical: {-ej} derives from the original i-stem declension (from ∗ -mjm). Some words in the i-stem declension ended in [c˛ ], [s˛
], [s z], and so {-ej} was understood to ‹ ‹ ‹ ‹ occur after these consonants. As the masculines that belonged to the i-stem declension moved over to Declension , they brought the ending {-ej} with them. Hard labials have both: cel†, (newer célt,) but yf=v.

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djp ‘wagon’). There was another type of ablaut, between full grade and reduced grade, and traces of this r e d u c t i v e a b l au t (in Slavic, ∗ e* ∼ ∗*ı > ∗ e ∼ ∗ m; ∗ a* ∼ ∗ u* > ∗ o ∼ ∗ () remain in the allomorphy of verbs such as 1sg ,thé (full grade) ∼ inf ,hƒnm ‘take’ (reduced grade). Somewhat more productive is the reflex of q ua n t i t a t i v e a b l au t in the formation of secondary imperfectives. ¯ > ∗ o ∼ ∗ a is still visible in, for example, The original alternation of ∗ a* ∼ ∗ a jnnjkryénm/jnnƒkrbdfnm ‘push away’ (in which it must be an extension, since the o is not original). The alternations in the stems of gjlj,hƒnm/gjl,bhƒnm ‘pick up’, dßpdfnm/dspsdƒnm ‘call out’ also go back to quantitative Ablaut of the reduced ¯ > ∗ ( ∼ ∗ y > º ∼ [Co È]). This alternation grade (∗*ı ∼ ∗¯ı > ∗ m ∼ i > ∗ º ∼ [C ¸ i]; ∗ u* ∼ ∗ u can be described synchronically as an alternation of no vowel with {i}, either with palatalization in the preceding consonant (gjl,bhƒnm ‘pick up’ {-b˛ ir-aj-}) or without (dspsdƒnm ‘call forth’ {-ziv-a(j)}). Such residues of earlier ablaut can be treated as part of the lexical allomorphy of verbs.

2.5.5 Morphophonemic {o}

Hundreds of years ago, ∗ e changed to o under certain conditions -- under stress before hard consonants (nom pl ∗ s†la > c=kf ‘villages’, nom pl ∗ˇz†ny > ;=ys ‘wives’) and in final open position (∗ pitm† > gbnm= ‘drinking’), while ∗ e remained unchanged under stress before a palatalized consonant (∗ selmsk(jm > c†kmcrbq ‘village’s’). Unstressed, this ∗ e did not change to ∗ o, and the reflex of unstressed ∗ e is realized as [ì] after soft consonants (∗ seló > ctkj´ [s˛ ìlj´]) and as [ï] after hardened palatals (∗ˇzenƒ > ;tyƒ [zïnƒ]). ‹ If the original pattern had been preserved without change, it would have ˇo óCo ∼ S ˇo †C ˇo ï} resulted in a synchronic pattern of {C ¸ óCo ∼ C ¸ †C ¸∼C ¸ ì} (or {S ¸∼S after hardened palatals ˇSo ); in simplified terms, the pattern would be {óCo ∼ †C ¸ ∼ ì}. The original distribution has been eroded in various ways. Original ∗ ˇe did not change to o and then subsequently merged with ∗ e, leaving many tokens of [†] before hard consonants that derive from ∗ ˇe: n†kj ‘body’, v†cnj ‘place’, w†ksq ‘whole’. In addition, ∗ e was preserved as [†] before formerly soft consonants that have hardened before other consonants: ;†ycrbq ‘female’, ex†,ysq ‘teaching’. As a result, we now find [†] as well as [ó] before hard consonants. The earlier pattern {óCo ∼ †C ¸ ∼ ì} is still preserved in some derivational nests, but there has been a tendency, gradual and long-term, to generalize [ó] at the expense of [†]. Thus hti†nxfnsq ‘latticed’ can now be hti=nxfnsq ‘latticed’, in deference to nom pl hti=nf ‘grates, lattice’. Pd=plxfnsq ‘starry’ has already adopted [o] from pl=pls, itself derived by analogy to the alternation of {óCo ∼ †C ¸ ∼ ì} in ;tyƒ ‘woman’, nom pl ;=ys. Within nominal paradigms, alternation has been eliminated (except for nom sg x=hn, nom pl x†hnb ‘devil’). In particular, the [ó] does not revert to [†] before

Sounds

Table 2.12 Reflexes of the {óCo ∼ †C ¸ ∼ ì} pattern in verbs o

{CVC -ƒ- : CVCj -}

[ì] / inf, 1sg prs

[†] / prs

[ó] / if, psv

‘hew’ ‘tousle’ ‘scratch’ ‘lash’

-ntcƒnm -nhtgƒnm -xtcƒnm -[ktcnƒnm

-n†itim -nh†gktim -x†itim -[k†otim

-n=csdfnm, -n=cfy -nh=gsdfnm, -nh=gfy -x=csdfnm, -x=cfy -[k=cnsdfnm, -[k=cnfy

the palatalized consonants of the (dative-)locative singular (j v=lt ‘about honey’, j rk=yt ‘about the maple’) or before palatalized velars (o=rb ‘cheeks’). Matters are complex in the root vocalism of verbs; it depends on the class of verb. There are two classes of verbs in which the alternation {óCo ∼ †C ¸ ∼ ì} is still visible. One group is obstruent-stem verbs. Stressed [ó] is found in the masculine past (l-participle), e.g., ∗ pekl(> g=r ‘he baked’, ∗ nesl(> y=c ‘he carried’. This is one of the few forms of such verbs in which the root vowel is actually stressed. The past active participle at one time had [†], but now has [ó], e.g., ghby†cibq > ghby=cibq ‘having brought’. In velar-stem verbs, the infinitive is also stressed and the vocalism is [†] (e.g., g†xm), while [ó] appears in the masculine singular (g=r), implying {óCo ∼ †C ¸ ∼ ì } for velar-stem verbs. This pattern has been imposed on verbs with etymological ∗ ˇe, which otherwise should have become [†]: edk=r ‘he carried away’, ghtyt,h=u ‘he neglected’. Recently c=r has become possible as the masculine past of c†xm ‘hack’, in a root with etymological ∗ ˇe. To judge by warnings in normative manuals, a pronunciation with [o⁄] has long been an alternate pronunciation for pfghz´u ‘he harnessed’. The one other class of verbs in which the alternation {óCo ∼ †C ¸ ∼ ì} occurs ´ Cj -}. In these verbs, [ì] occurs in the infinitive, past, and is the type {CVC0 -ƒ- : CV first-singular present; [†] occurs in the other forms of the present; and [o⁄] is found in the derived imperfective and passive participle, as illustrated in Table 2.12. Other verb conjugations do not have a three-way alternation in vocalism. Verbs with fixed stress on the stem have [†] or [o]⁄ but no alternation: -l=hyenm ‘jerk’, -l=hytim, -l=hubdfnm, -l=hyen; -l†kfnm ‘do’, -l†kftim, -l†ksdfnm, -l†kfy. Verbs with retracted stress in the imperfective and passive participle have an alternation of unstressed [ì] with either [o]⁄ (-vtnyénm ‘cast’, -vtny=im, -v=nsdfnm, -v=nyen) or [†] (-cktl∫nm ‘follow’, -cktl∫im, -ck†;bdfnm, -ck†;ty), but again there is no three-way alternation. The upshot is that the original pattern {óCo ∼ †C ¸ ∼ ì} that arose o ∗ out of the change of e > o / C is virtually moribund; it has remained only in quite specific lexical groups.

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2.5.6 Null- and full-grade vocalism In certain words there is an alternation at the end of the stem between the presence of a vowel and the absence of a vowel: nom sg vj´[, gen sg v[f ‘moss’; gen pl yj´;tr, nom sg dim yj´;rf ‘foot’; nom sg ,j,=h, gen sg ,j,hƒ ‘beaver’. The absence of vowel, or null grade, is found when a vowel follows, as happens in most inflectional forms. The overt vowel, or full grade, occurs when no inflectional vowel follows, when the ending is “zero.” These “fleeting” vowels come from two historical sources. Some stems ended in jer vowels, whether in the root (∗ m(x() or a derivational suffix (the adjectival suffix ∗ -mn-, the diminutive suffix ∗ -mk-/∗ -(k-). Whenever a vowel other than a jer followed the stem, as happened in most inflectional endings, the stem jer was “weak” and was lost. It was “strong,” and kept, only if the following inflectional ending contained a weak jer. Such weak jers were the source of zero endings in declension that now elicit the full grade in the root. This happens in the declension of nouns in the nominative singular of Declension and Declension (there also in the instrumental) and the genitive plural of Declension and Declension . This source of vowel alternations was supplemented by a tendency to break up clusters of obstruent and sonorant at the end of words by inserting an anaptyctic vowel. Such clusters arose in the same morphological environments as those in which jers were vocalized. For this reason there are two historical sources of alternation between what might be termed null grade (no vowel) and full grade in the same morphological contexts. The synchronic reflexes of these two sources are similar and can be discussed together with a little caution.99 There are three patterns. First, the overt vowel, if stressed, is realized as [ó], not under stress as [ə]; the preceding consonant is hard, or Co . This pattern occurs in specific lexical items (lyj´ ‘bottom’, gen pl lj´y) and with the diminutive suffix (gk∫nrf ‘plate’, gen pl gk∫njr) and specifically after a preceding velar (juj´ym ‘fire’). (Examples are given in Table 2.13.) In notation, this pattern of vowels is {º ∼ Co {ó ∼ ə}} -- an alternation of {-º-} with full grade, which is then either stressed [ó] or unstressed [ə]. Secondly, the preceding consonant is Ci -- either paired soft or a palatal. The i vowel under stress is [o], ⁄ [ì] in unstressed position. In notation: {º ∼ C {ó ∼ ì}}. It occurs before velars (rjy=r ‘hobbyhorse’; cthmuƒ ‘earring’, gen pl cth=u) and hard dentals (dtckj´ ‘oar’, gen pl d=ctk, nom sg ,j,=h).

99

To describe alternations between full and null grades synchronically, there are three options: deletion of an underlying mid vowel in certain specified contexts; insertion of a vowel in clusters in specified contexts; or a static (non-derivational) relation of alternate lexical forms, some with the vowel (full grade) and some without (null grade). The last approach is assumed here.

(nom sg) gen pl

/C {To Ko }

nom sg (gen sg)

nom sg (gen sg)

(nom sg) gen pl

nom sg (gen sg)

(nom sg) gen pl

nom sg (gen sg)

(nom sg) gen pl

≤j≥

suffixal {-k-}

lexical

[j´]

[j´]

[j´]

[j´]

stressed

≤=≥ (≤t≥)

≤j≥

≤j≥

≤j≥

rjn=k rjnkƒ, g=c gcƒ, k=l kmlƒ, ,j,=h ,j,hƒ, hj;j´y hj;yƒ, yj;j´r yj;rƒ, rjy=r rjymrƒ, gepsh=r gepshmrƒ but [ht,†n [ht,nƒ

itcnthyz´ itcnth=y, ctcnhƒ ctcn=h

juj´ym juyz´, ,euj´h ,euhƒ

recj´r recrƒ, uhe,eij´r uhe,eirƒ kbcnj´r kbcnrƒ ;yxj´r ;yxrƒ ---

---

rf,fhuƒ rf,fhj´u, pkj´ pj´k, lyj´ lj´y vj´[ v[ƒ, kj´, k,ƒ, kjvj´nm kjvnΩ

Table 2.13 Vowel-zero variants (genitive plural, nominative singular)

[ì]/[ï]

[´]

[´]

[´]

unstressed

≤t≥

≤j≥

≤j≥

≤j≥

gk∫nrf gk∫njr, hjuƒnrf hjuƒnjr, dtl=hrj dtl=hjr ré,jr ré,rf, bp,s ´ njr bp,s ´ nrf, ltcz´njr ltcz´nrf, jcnƒnjr jcnƒnrf rérkf rérjk, ré[yz ré[jym, nz´ukj nz´ujk cd=rjh cd=rhf, éujk éukf, éujkm éukz, l=ujnm l=unz, yj´ujnm yj´unz rj´ujnm rj´unz, kj´rjnm kj´rnz gjkjnyj´ gjkj´nty, dtlhj´ d=lth, dtckj´ d=ctk, g†cyz g†cty, ,hƒiyj ,hƒity ,é,ty ,é,yf, d†nth d†nhf, éptk épkf, ,fhƒitr ,fhƒirf

kƒgjnm kƒgnz

---

/C j

(nom sg) gen pl nom sg (gen sg)

nom sg (gen sg)

(nom sg) gen pl

/C c

[†] ≤t≥

≤t≥

≤t≥

[†]/[j´] [†]

nom sg (gen sg) (nom sg) gen pl nom sg (gen sg)

/C C ¸

[†]

≤t≥

[†]

(nom sg) gen pl

≤j≥

/C Po

[j´]

(nom sg) gen pl

stressed

ˇo {To Ko } /S

Table 2.13 (cont).

ckjdwj´ ckjd†w, ctkmwj´ ctk†w, rhskmwj´ rhsk†w jn†w jnwƒ, ;bk†w ;bkmwƒ, rjy†w rjywƒ cnfnmz´ cnfn†q hex†q hexmz´, cjkjd†q cjkjdmz´, djhj,†q djhj,mz´, vehfd†q vehfdmz´

rjhxvƒ rjhx†v, nmvƒ n†v, celm,ƒ cel†, (archaic) k†d kmdƒ, yf=v yƒqv ptvkz´ ptv†km htv†ym htvyz´

ibirƒ ibij´r, cthmuƒ cth=u, ls ´ ymrf ls ´ ytr, rbirƒ rbij´r

[ì]

[ì]

[ì]

[ì]

[ì]/[ï]

unstressed

≤t≥

≤t≥

≤t≥

≤t≥

≤t≥

uj´cnmz uj´cnbq (≤b≥) éktq ékmz, ∫htq ∫hmz, x∫htq x∫hmz

ld†hwf ld†htw, p†hrfkmwt p†hrfktw gƒktw gƒkmwf

celm,ƒ célt,, ecƒlm,f ecƒlt,, n/hmvƒ n÷htv, rjivƒ rj´itv (rj´iv) --rƒgkz rƒgtkm k∫dtym k∫dyz

héxrf héxtr, yj´;rf yj´;tr, cj´irf cj´itr

Sounds

The third pattern is one in which [†] occurs under stress along with [ì] not under stress. The preceding consonant is Ci . In notation, the pattern is: {º ∼ Ci {† ∼ ì}}. It occurs by default, when the lexical conditions for {º ∼ Co {ó ∼ ə}} and the phonological conditions for {º ∼ Ci {ó ∼ ì}} are not met. It is relevant to note that, before hard labials, one might expect the same vowel as with hard velars and dentals, but in fact the majority of the few forms have {º ∼ Ci {† ∼ ì}} rather than {º ∼ Ci {ó ∼ ì}}. The distribution of variants is summarized in Table 2.13. Matters are analogous but simpler in the masculine predicative (short) form of adjectives. The majority of tokens of fleeting vowels involve suffixal {-n-}, from ∗ -mn-. Synchronically the alternation is the pattern {º ∼ Ci {ó ∼ ì}}. Observe: A F T E R P A L A T A L S , cvtiyj´q ‘amusing’, cvtij´y (note spelling with ≤j≥), nj´iysq ‘nauseating’, nj´ity; A F T E R L A B I A L S A N D D E N T A L S , évysq ‘intelligent’, ev=y; lehyj´q ‘bad’, leh=y; elj´,ysq ‘comfortable’, elj´,ty; rhƒcysq ‘beautiful’, rhƒcty. This {º ∼ Ci {ó ∼ ì}} is also the pattern for anaptyctic vowels in clusters in which the second consonant is a dental: j´cnhsq ‘sharp’, jcn=h; r∫cksq ‘sour’, r∫ctk. A velar normally conditions {º ∼ Co {ó ∼ ə}}, hence [ə] for the unstressed position: lj´kubq ‘long’, lj´kju; vz´urbq ‘soft’, vz´ujr. If the preceding consonant is soft or a palatal, palatalization is maintained, and the pattern is {º ∼ Ci {ó ∼ ì}}: uj´hmrbq ‘bitter’, uj´htr [ì]; [éltymrbq ‘thin’, [éltytr [ì]; ,j´qrbq ‘boisterous’, ,j´tr [ì]; nz´;rbq ‘difficult’, nz´;tr [ï]. From the range of contexts the following generalizations emerge. The pattern {º ∼ Co {ó ∼ ə}} is restricted; it occurs with a limited number of individual lexical items, with suffixal {-k-}, and after a velar. If the specific conditions for {º ∼ Co {ó ∼ ə}} are not met, then either {º ∼ Ci {ó ∼ ì}} or {º ∼ Ci {† ∼ ì}} occurs, which are the same for unstressed vowels. Under stress, they are distributed complementarily according to the following consonant. Before (hard) velars and hard dentals (not [c]), the pattern is {º ∼ Ci {ó ∼ ì}}, with stressed [ó], and elsewhere {º ∼ Ci {† ∼ ì}}, with stressed [†]. There are some additional, rather specific, contexts in which full-null ablaut occurs. Prefixes acquire {o} (usually unstressed) before roots with the null grade, for example: cjlhƒnm (clthé) ‘rip off’, gjlj,hƒnm (gjl,thé) ‘pick up’, cjpdƒnm ‘call together’, jnjvhé (jnvth†nm) ‘die off’. The roots which condition the full grade in prefixes have to be specified lexically. Prepositions likewise adopt ≤j≥ before certain roots (§4.2.2).

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3 Inflectional morphology 3.1 Introduction Much of the work of Russian grammar is done by inflectional morphology: a given word has a basic shape that is relatively stable, while the end of the word varies, resulting in different forms of one word that are used with different functions or in different contexts. Nouns and verbs differ somewhat from each other in their strategies of inflection. Nouns present a pleasingly geometric paradigm: to use a noun, a speaker chooses one of about a dozen distinct forms expressing one of six cases and, simultaneously, one of two numbers. Nouns are partitioned into three declension classes. With few exceptions, the stems of nouns remain the same, or nearly the same, in all cases and numbers. Thus rj´cnm ‘bone’ (from Declension ) uses a stem {kost˛-} in all forms (nom sg rj´cnm, dat sg rj´cnb), while l†kj ‘deed, matter’ (of a different declension class, Declension ) uses the same stem {d˛ el-} in almost all forms (nom sg l†kj, dat sg l†ke, ins pl ltkƒvb, though loc sg l†kt implies a slightly different stem, {d˛ el˛-}). Though the stems are stable, the endings differ depending on the declension class, as is evident from the difference in (for example) dat sg rj´cnb as opposed to dat sg l†ke. Nouns are also partitioned into one of three syntactic genders reflected in patterns of agreement in adjectives and verbs; the partition into syntactic genders is closely correlated with (though it is not identical to) the partition into declension classes. A noun belongs to a single gender. Adjectives, unlike nouns, vary in their shape according to the case, number, and gender, in agreement with the noun with which they are associated. Adjectives and verbs distinguish gender in the singular but not in the plural. Accordingly, it is possible to speak of a distinction of four gender-number forms: the three singular genders and the plural. Personal pronouns (first-person, second-person, reflexive) distinguish case and number but not gender. Third-person pronouns distinguish gender in the singular, as well as case and number. Verbs differ from nouns in various respects. While singular nouns have different endings depending on the declension class, verbs have more uniform grammatical endings. For example, {-s}‹ marks the second-person singular of 92

Inflectional morphology

the present tense, in all verbs; {-l˛i} (spelled ≤kb≥) is the past-tense plural ending for all verbs. With respect to the shape of the stem, verbs are morphologically more heterogeneous than nouns (§3.2.1). Each form in the whole set of inflectional forms of any word -- noun, adjective, verb -- has a stress. Stress is not automatically and consistently assigned to one and the same syllable in every word or form of a word, such as the first syllable (as in Czech) or the penultimate syllable (as in Polish). Depending on the word, stress can be fixed on the root or on a suffix or can vary between the ending and other positions, as, for example, in nom sg leiƒ ‘soul’, acc sg léie, gen sg lei∫, nom pl léib, dat pl leiƒv ‘soul’ or 1sg yfgbié ‘I write’, 2sg yfg∫itim, fem pst yfgbcƒkf, psv yfg∫cfy ‘write’. The number of patterns of stress is, however, small.

3.2 Conjugation of verbs 3.2.1 Verbal categories In contrast to the pleasingly geometric declension of nouns, the conjugation of verbs is more heterogeneous. The morphological techniques used by verbs are not always strictly inflectional, and verbs have more variation in their stems. In verbs, the inflectional endings are added to a verbal stem that includes the root and, in most verbs, an additional c o n j u g a t i o n a l s u f f i x . The suffix together with the root forms a stem that is phonologically suitable for adding endings. The suffix and the verbal stem can have different shapes in anticipation of the ending. For example, the past-tense feminine form nh†,jdfkf includes a conjugational suffix {-ova-} that ends in a vowel before the following consonantal marker of the past tense (the {-la}), while the present second-person singular form nh†,etim includes a suffix {-uj-} ending in a consonant before the endings of the present tense, which begin with vowels. Because the stem does not always have the same shape, it is necessary to distinguish two stems for verbs, the past-infinitive stem and the present stem. The pairing of stems defines the conjugation class to which a verb belongs. For example, nh†,jdfnm with its two stems belongs to the class {{-ova-} : {-uj-} }, or, more simply, if the alternate stems are cited in the same order consistently, {-ova- : -uj-}.1 A prominent, characteristically Slavic category, is the category of aspect. Almost every verb can be classified as perfective or imperfective, with only a limited number of indeterminacies. The distinction of aspect is more a partition of the lexicon than an inflectional operation. There is no single morphological device that marks the opposition of aspect; rather, aspect is expressed by a combination 1

On verbal categories, see Jakobson 1932/1971[b], 1957[a]/1971[b].

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of strategies. Verbs without prefixes (s i m p l e x verbs) are, as a rule, imperfective: gbcƒnm ‘write’, rhen∫nm ‘spin’. Verbs with prefixes as a rule are perfective -- gthtgbcƒnm ‘write over’, pfrhen∫nm ‘twirl around’ -- except when an additional derivational suffix makes them imperfective: gthtg∫csdfnm , pfrhéxbdfnm . Finite forms distinguish the imperative mood from forms expressing tense.2 The imperative makes use of the present-tense stem. If the stress falls on the verbal stem throughout the present and if the stem ends in a single consonant, no further vowel is added to the stem: vehkßxm ‘purr!’ (1sg vehkßxe is not stressed on the ending). If the first-person singular present is stressed or if the stem ends in a consonant cluster, the stem is expanded by adding a suffix {-i-}: gbi∫ ‘write!’ (1sg gbié is stressed on the ending) or gélhb ‘powder!’ (though 1sg gélh/ is not stressed on the ending, the stem ends in a cluster). In the singular there is no further marker; an extra morph {-te-} ( [t˛ì], spelled ≤nt≥) is added to make a plural imperative or an imperative for formal address to one person. Verbs with the prefix dß, which is necessarily stressed as long as the verb is perfective, rely on the stress in the simplex verb from which the perfective is derived to determine whether to add the suffix {-i-}. Thus, root stress in 1sg ,hj´ie ‘I throw’, imv ,hj´cm and cnƒdk/ ‘I place’, imv cnƒdm implies imv dß,hjcm, dßcnfdm, while, in contrast, stress on the ending in 1sg dtlé, imv dtl∫ and nzyé, nzy∫ implies dßdtlb, dßnzyb. However, analogical forms with {-i-} -- dß,hjcb, dßcnfdb -- have become frequent (as much as a third of the tokens on the web).3 Another idiosyncrasy concerns the small number of verbs whose monosyllabic present stem ends in [j]: rktdƒnm ‘peck’, cvtz´nmcz ‘laugh’, cnjz´nm ‘stand’ (§3.2.6). With the appropriate intonation, first-person plural forms can be used hortatively, to encourage the participation of the addressee (--- Bltv r yfv, --- crfpfk ?hf ‘--- Let’s go to our place, --- said Iura’). Expanded with -nt, the first-person plural is used as a plural or formal B-form (--- Bltvnt cnfhbxrf gjntibnm ‘--- Let’s [all] go comfort the old man’). The expression of tense intersects with aspect. Imperfective verbs distinguish three tenses: past, present, and future. The morphological means used to express these three tenses differ. The present tense inflects for three persons and two numbers, 1sg rhexé ‘I turn’, 2sg rhénbim, etc. The future of imperfectives is a combination of the unique future of ,ßnm (1sg ,éle, etc.: §3.2.8) plus the infinitive. The past tense is marked by a transparent and generally stable formant {-l-}. (It is, however, lost in the masculine singular of those verbs whose stem ends in a consonant other than a dental stop: y=c ‘he carried’, g=r ‘he baked’, 2 3

Trubetzkoy 1975:223 stated clearly that the imperative and infinitive were tense-less forms. Dß,hjcb(nt): 6,310 xx / 17,090 xx total = 37 percent, dßcnfdb(nt) 2,838 xx / 18,948 xx total = 15 percent .

Inflectional morphology

uh=, ‘he rowed’, d=p ‘he conveyed’). Since it developed from a participle, the past expresses the three singular genders and one plural that does not distinguish gender rather than person and number: msc g†k ‘he sang’, fem g†kf, nt g†kj, pl g†kb. Perfective verbs distinguish two tenses. One, marked by {-l-} and gender-number markers, is unambiguously a past tense. The other tense has the same morphological shape as the present tense of imperfectives: perfective pfrhen∫nm ‘to wind around’ forms 1sg pfrhexé, 2sg pfrhénbim, parallel to imperfective 1sg rhexé, 2sg rhénbim, etc. These present-tense forms of perfective verbs, however, do not report present events -- events that are actual at the here and now of speech, but events that are anticipated to occur at some future or hypothetical time (§6.5.8, 6.5.7): rj´yxbncz ‘will come to an end’, cjxby∫n ‘she will compose’. Thus, in these perfective forms there is something of a discrepancy between the form, which is parallel to the present-tense forms of imperfectives, and the function, which is not that of a present tense. It is an old problem what to call these forms -- whether “present,” in honor of their form but not their function, or “non-past,” in honor of their function but not their form. Here these forms are termed p r e s e n t -t e n s e f o r m s , but with the understanding that they do not report actual, present-time events.4 The particle ,s expresses irrealis modality -- a situation that is not unambiguously real. The resulting combination is less of an inflectional category than, for example, the opposition of present vs. past tense. The verb, if finite, must at the same time inflect for past tense; the tense marking is the real inflection. Morever, the particle does not always occur immediately after the verb (§6.2.1). Participles are adjectival -- the usual sense of participles -- or adverbial (that is, lttghbxfcnbz). Adjectival participles can be active or passive. Participles are created by adding a formant that forms the participial stem. In adjectival participles, the stem is then followed by the inflectional endings of adjectives. The formation of active adjectival and adverbial participles intersects with aspect. Not all of the eight conceivable forms are used freely.5 The possibilities are schematized in Table 3.1. PAS T ACTIV E ADJECTIV AL PAR TICIPLES , PER FECTIV E AND IMPER FECTIV E, are formed by adding {-vs-‹ } to the past-infinitive stem when it ends in a vowel, and to this stem are added adjectival endings expressing gender, case, and number: hfpuhjv∫dibq ‘having routed’, yfgbcƒdibq ‘having written’, ljcn∫uyedibq ‘having reached’, dßhdfdibq ‘having ripped out’, gjlévfdibq ‘having thought’. Verbs whose past-tense stem ends in a consonant use the formant {-ˇs-}: ghby=cibq ‘having brought in’ (msc nom sg), ghbd†lie/ ‘having led 4

Rathmayr 1976. Gvozdanovi´c 1994 calls them “present/future.”

5

Brecht 1976.

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Table 3.1 Aspect, tense, and participles

present past

imperfective adjectival participle

imperfective adverbial participle

perfective adjectival participle

perfective adverbial participle

g∫ieobq gbcƒdibq

g∫if [? gbcƒd(ib)]

--yfgbcƒdibq cnjkryédibqcz ghby=cibq

ghbytcz´
yfgbcƒd cnjkryédibcm

gbcƒnm ‘write’, yfgbcƒnm ‘write’, ghbytcn∫ ‘deliver’, cnjkryénmcz ‘conflict with’
= {CVT- : CVT-|e|} stems ending in dental consonant

in’ (fem acc). Past imperfective participles are still used: [1]

[elj;ybr, gbcfdibq gjhnhtns b hfcgbcsdfdibq wthrdb an artist, who used to do portraits and decorate churches

The P R E S E N T A C T I V E A D J E C T I V A L P A R T I C I P L E ( I M P E R F E C T I V E ) can be generated by subtracting the {-t} from the third plural present and adding the formant {-s˛
‹ -}: vjkΩn > vjkΩobq ‘beseech’, g∫ien > g∫ieobq ‘write’. Present active adjectival participles of imperfectives are used freely ([2]); perfectives are not used. [2]

,evfujq, ghtlgbcsdf/otq d 24 xfcf jxbcnbnm dtcm dnjhjq эnf; ljvf a document dictating the evacuation of the whole second story within 24 hours

Adverbial participles developed from adjectival participles as they stopped declining. The P R E S E N T A D V E R B I A L P A R T I C I P L E ( I M P E R F E C T I V E ) is {-a} added to the stem of the present tense: ∫of ‘searching’, lévfz ‘thinking’ (present stem {dum-aj-}), jhufybpéz ‘organizing’ (present stem {oran˛ iz-uj-}). A mutable consonant is palatalized (Ci grade): ytcz´ ‘carrying’, ghbdjlz´ ‘adducing’, ukzlz´ ‘seeing’, gj´vyz ‘remembering’. The present adverbial participles formed from verbs with phonologically minimal stems are awkward (but possible: gthbjlbxtcrb gjdbpubdfz, cdbcnz, b hdz yf ct,t jlt;le jn bp,snrf xedcnd ‘periodically squealing, whistling, and tearing their clothes from an excess of feelings’); they are not standard with stems that require a velar to be palatalized (?gtrz´ [‘baking’], ?,thtuz´ [‘protecting’]). The P A S T A D V E R B I A L P A R T I C I P L E is a truncated version of the adjectival participle in {-vs-}, ‹ usually just {-v}: jcnƒd ‘having left behind’, dß,hfd ‘having chosen’, gjcnƒdbd ‘having placed’, ed∫ltd ‘having seen’, ghb†[fd ‘having arrived’; the fuller form in {-vsi} ‹ is used occasionally: jcnƒdib (§6.3.5).

Inflectional morphology

Reflexive verbs require {-vsi} ‹ to support the reflexive affix: cjckƒdibcm ‘having referred to’, jcnƒdibcm ‘having remained’, cnjkryédibcm ‘having collided’. Perfective verbs whose past-infinitive stems end in a dental consonant now use the original present-tense formant {-a} for the past adverbial participle: ghbytcz´ ‘upon bringing, having brought’, ddtlz´ ‘having led in’, j,htnz´ ‘upon discovering, having discovered’.6 The distribution and use of adverbial participles is especially sensitive to aspect (§6.3.6). Present adverbial participles of imperfectives are used widely, but past adverbial participles of imperfectives, such as lévfd ‘having thought’, ,∫d ‘having been beating’, though they are listed in grammars, are rarely used. There is basically only one type of adverbial participle of perfective verbs.7 The past passive participle is formed from transitive perfective verbs, those governing accusative objects in their active form. (It is formed residually from a small number of simplex imperfectives: g∫cfy ‘written’.) There are three formants. Verbs whose past-infinitive stem ends in {a} take a suffix {-n-}: yfg∫cfy ‘written’, cajhvbhj´dfy ‘formed’, jnj´hdfy ‘ripped off’. Another, related suffix is used with verbs whose past-infinitive stem ends in a consonant (y=c implies ghbytc=y ‘brought’) or verbs whose past-infinitive stem should end in a vowel other than {-a-}, when the vowel is truncated specifically in this form: {CVC-i-} > {CVCj -} edj´kty ‘released’, {CVC-e-} > {CVCj -} ghtjljk=y (ghtjljktyƒ, ghtjljktyj´, ghtjljk=yysq) ‘overcome’. This suffix, spelled ≤ty≥ (explicit ≤=y≥), is pronounced [on⁄ ] under stress (ghbytc=y, ghtjljk=y) and [ìn] not under stress (edj´kty) ([ïn] after hard palatals: evyj´;ty ‘multiplied’). And third, {-t-} is used with specific verb classes, notably verbs suffixed with {-nu-}: ljcn∫uyen ‘achieved’, also with pastinfinitive stems that end in a vowel that is not part of a conjugational suffix: pfrhßn ‘closed’, jni∫n ‘sewn off’, erj´kjn ‘pierced’. Present passive participles, limited to written Russian, are formed by adding {-m-} to the present-tense stem of imperfectives: herjdjl∫vsq ‘led’, from imperfective herjdjl∫im; jgbcsdƒtvsq ‘being described’, from imperfective jgbcsdƒtim. Infinitives, like participles, lack a subject. If participles present an event as a quality (adjectival) or circumstance (adverbial), infinitives present events as possibilities. And indeed, in older grammatical traditions, the infinitive was considered a mood. The infinitive is marked by {-t˛} added to the past-infinitive stem; that stem ends in a vowel for most verbs. With those verbs whose stem 6 7

Rarely, ghbytcib (4%), ghbdtlib (1.9%) . SRIa 2.165 cites an innovative use of present-tense perfective participles with an exemplary meaning: Z vju ghbdtcnb cjnyb jnhsdrjd bp rybu Uhbyf, dpdjkye/ob[ rf;ljuj, yt gjnthzdituj cgjcj,yjcnb djkyjdfnmcz gthtl phtkbotv ghtrhfcyjuj ‘I could cite hundreds of examples of fragments from Greene’s books that would excite anyone who has not lost the capacity to experience excitement in the face of the spectacle of the beautiful.’

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Table 3.2 Morphological strategies of verbal categories category

stem

morphological marker

infinitive past tense past active adjectival participle past active adverbial participle past passive participle



{-t˛} {-l-} + gender--number markers {-vs-} ‹ + adjectival declension

{-v} (resultative {-vsi}) ‹ ∼ {-vsi-s˛ ‹ })

imperative

present tense: 1sg present tense: 2sg 3sg 1pl 2pl present tense: 3pl



{-t-} + adjectival declension (/{-nu-} verbs; /asuffixal vowel-stem verbs) {-n-} + adjectival declension (/{-a-} verbs) {-j´n-} ({-[ìn]-}) + adjectival declension (/stem ends in vowel not {-a-}) {-∅} ∼ {-í-} (if 1sg {-ú} or if {CVCC -}) + sg {-∅} ∼ pl {-te} {-u}, all classes thematic |i| ∼ |e| + person--number markers

present active adjectival participle

present adverbial participle



{-at} if thematic |i| {-ut} if thematic |e| {-a} if thematic |i| + {-s˛…‹ } + adjectival declension {-u} if thematic |e| + {-s˛…‹ } + adjectival declension {-a} (implying CI )

ends in a consonant, the consonants and the infinitive ending together are stressed {-st˛í} (ytcn∫ ‘carry’, uhtcn∫ ‘row’). In stems ending in a velar, the velar and infinitive fuse as {-c˛ }: ‹ g†xm ‘to bake’, ghtyt,h†xm ‘to ignore’. The categories of verbs and their morphological strategies are summarized in Table 3.2.

3.2.2 Conjugation classes As noted, verbs have two possible stems, used for different categories.8 The pa s t i n f i n i t i v e is used for the infinitive, past, and past participles (the past active adjectival participle, the past adverbial participle, the past passive participle). 8

The issue of whether verbs should be described in terms of two stems (as in a long tradition, from Leskien on) or one (as in Jakobson 1948/1971[b]) is a non-issue. The most durable observation of Jakobson’s study is the observation that there is complementarity in the shape of stems in the pastinfinitive (the stem ends in a vowel before consonantal endings) and the present (the stem ends in a consonant before vocalic endings). If one starts with the single underlying stem, to produce this complementarity, the single stem has to be modified immediately to yield two alternate stems -that is to say, there are two stems after all (Chvany 1990, Elson 1986). Alternative approaches to verbal morphology are offered by Lehfeldt 1978, Fegert 1986.

Inflectional morphology

The p r e s e n t s t e m is used for the present-tense forms, the imperative, and present participles (adjectival and adverbial active and present passive participle). When the stems are different, as they are for most verb types, they differ in how the conjugational suffix is treated: it is longer in one stem and shorter or missing altogether in the other. Inflectional endings in the past-infinitive subsystem begin with consonants, and by complementarity, the stem of the past-infinitive of most verbs ends in a vowel. The inflections of the present tense begin with a vowel, and by complementarity, the verbal stem ends in a consonant before these vocalic endings. There are two conjugations, which differ according to the t h e m a t i c l i g a t u r e used between the stem and the markers of person and number in the “middle” forms of the paradigm -- the second- and third-person singular and firstand second-person plural. One conjugation uses a suffix spelled ≤b≥: vjkx∫im ‘be silent’, 3sg vjkx∫n, 1pl vjkx∫v, 2pl vjkx∫nt. The third plural of this conjugation is {-at} without the ligature: 3pl vjkxƒn. Verbs of this type might be termed “i-Conjugation”; its thematic ligature can be written as “|i|.” The other conjugational class has a vowel in the middle forms of the paradigm that derives from ∗ e and is spelled now ≤t≥ (or if stressed, in explicit style, ≤=≥): 2sg l†kftim, ytc=im (inexplicit ytctim), 3sg l†kftn, ytc=n (ytctn), 1pl l†kftv, ytc=v (ytctv), 2pl l†kftnt, ytc=nt (ytctnt). The third plural is {-ut} without the ligature: 3pl l†kf/n, ytcén. Although the vowel is pronounced as [o]⁄ when it is stressed, as in 2sg ytc=im, etc., it is convenient to follow history and orthography and identify this as the “e-Conjugation” and write the thematic vowel as “|e|.” The first singular is {-u}, without the ligature, in both conjugations. Within each of these two conjugations, it is possible to distinguish more specific conjugation classes depending on the shape of the two stems. The classes with illustrative verbs are listed in Table 3.3. An abstract stem shape is given for the past-infinitive and the present stem of each type. A verb class can be identified as the set composed of the two stems. Thus k/,∫nm is: {{CVCi -i-} : {CVCi -|i|-} } or, more simply, {CVC-i- : CVC-|i|}. In the column before the gloss, they are identified by the number of the conjugation type assigned in Zalizniak 1977[a]. All verbs of the i-Conjugation (top group in Table 3.3) have an overt suffix in the past-infinitive subsystem, but the suffix is missing in the present tense. The e-Conjugation divides into four groups. In one group, which includes the two most productive classes, there is a conjugational suffix that is syllabic in both subsystems; for example, ,hjcƒnm ‘throw’ is {{bros-a-} : {bros-aj|e|} }. In a second group, there is a suffix in the past-infinitive but it is lost or reduced to a non-syllabic form in the present subsystem, for example, gkƒrfnm ‘cry’ {{plak-a-} : {plac‹-|e|-} }. The third group, of a s u f f i x a l verbs, is a heterogeneous set of conjugation classes, each of which has a limited

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100 A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 3.3 Conjugation classes past-infinitive

present

infinitive

2sg

no.


{CVC-i-} {CVC-e-} ˇ -a-} {CVC

{CVC-|i|} {CVC-|i|} {CVC-|i|}

k/,∫nm cvjnh†nm vjkxƒnm

k÷,bim cvj´nhbim vjkx∫im

4 5 5

‘love’ ‘look at’ ‘be silent’

{CVC-a-} {CVC-e-} {CVC-ova-}

{CVC-aj-|e|} {CVC-ej-|e|} {CVC-uj-|e|-}

,hjcƒnm gmzy†nm nh†,jdfnm

,hjcƒtim gmzy†tim nh†,etim

1 1 2

‘toss’ ‘get tipsy’ ‘require’

{CVC-nu-} {CVC-a-} {CVC-a-}

{CVC-n-|e|} {CVCj -|e|} {CVC-|e|}

,hßpyenm gkƒrfnm cjcƒnm

,hßpytim gkƒxtim cjc=im

3 6 6

‘splash’ ‘cry’ ‘suck’

{CCa-} {CCa-} {CVJa-} {CVJa-} {CV-} {CV-} {CV-} {CV-} {CV-} {CVRV-} {CVR(V)-}

{CC-|e|} {CVC-|e|} {CVJ-|e|} {CVJ-|e|} {CVJ-|e|} {CVJ-|e|} {CJ-|e|} {CVN-|e|} {CN-|e|} {CVR-|e|} {CR-|e|}

;lƒnm ,hƒnm lfdƒnm rktdƒnm ;∫nm rhßnm g∫nm l†nm ;ƒnm rjkj´nm vth†nm (v=hkb)

;l=im ,th=im lf=im rk/=im ;bd=im rhj´tim gm=im l†ytim ;v=im rj´ktim vh=im

6 6 13 2 16 12 11 15 14 10 9

‘wait’ ‘take’ ‘give’ ‘peck’ ‘live’ ‘cover’ ‘drink’ ‘set’ ‘squeeze’ ‘prick’ ‘die’

{CVC-}

{CVC-|e|}

ytcn∫

ytc=im

7

‘carry’




= index of conjugation class in Zalizniak 1977[a]

number of members. The stems of the two subsystems differ in not entirely predictable ways, for example pdƒnm ‘call’ {{zva-} : {zov-|e|-} }. The fourth type is the set of verbs that lack any suffix; the stem ends in a consonant in both subsystems: ytcn∫ ‘carry’ {{n˛ os-} : {n˛ es-|e|-} }. Verbs of the e-Conjugation have unpalatalized consonants (C0 ) in the first-person singular and third plural, but palatalized consonants (Ci ) in the middle forms: k†pe ‘climb’ with [z] but k†ptim with [z˛]. The past-infinitive is generally stable, except for the type vth†nm ‘die’ (cf. v=hkb) and consonant stems such as inf dtcn∫ ‘lead’ (msc pst d=k, fem dtkƒ).

3.2.3 Stress patterns The possible stress patterns of verbs are relatively restricted. In the past, there are four patterns overall, two widespread and two restricted. (a) Stress can fall consistently on the root (= ‘R’): ckƒdbkf ,

Inflectional morphology

ckƒdbkb ‘glorify’. (b) Or stress can fall on the conjugational suffix (= ‘F ’): jhufybpjdƒkf , jhufybpjdƒkb ‘organize’. Less frequently, (c) stress may fall consistently on the desinence (= ‘E’): ytckƒ , ytck∫ ‘carry’, or (d) stress may be mobile (= ‘M’) -- that is, it may alternate between stress on the ending in the feminine past and stress not on the ending in other forms: dhfkƒ ‘lied’, but dhƒk , dhƒkj , dhƒkb . In the present system, there are four possibilities. (a) Stress can fall consistently on the root (= ‘R’): ckƒdk/, ckƒdbim. (b) If there is a conjugational suffix and if it is syllabic, stress can fall on that suffix (= ‘F ’): jhufybpé/, jhufybpétim. (c) Stress can fall consistently on the thematic vowel (= ‘T ’): ytcé, ytc=im ‘carry’. (d) Stress can vary between the first singular (and the imperative) and the syllable preceding the thematic vowel except in the first singular: gbié , gbi∫ , g∫itim ‘write’. This last pattern is a n t e t h e m a t i c accentuation (= ‘A’), in that stress often falls on the syllable preceding the thematic vowel. It is mobile accentuation, though different from that of the past tense.

3.2.4 Conjugation classes: i-Conjugation i-Conjugation has a limited number of groups, all suffixal. The conjugational suffix can be {-i-}, {-e-} ( a after palatals and ∗ j). The conjugational suffix is present in the past-infinitive stem (ghjc∫nm ‘ask’, ghjc∫kb), lost or replaced by the conjugation marker |i| in the present (ghjié, ghj´cbim). Consonants were followed by ∗ j (hence Cj ) in the first-person singular and palatalized before the conjugational suffix (whether ∗ i or ∗ˇe) and before the thematic vowel |i| in the other forms of the present tense and the past-infinitive, resulting in an alternation of Cj grade 1sg ghjié, j,∫;e and Ci grade: ghjc∫nm, 2sg ghj´cbim ‘ask’, j,∫ltnm, 2sg j,∫lbim ‘insult’. In abstract terms, the conjugation pattern is: {{CVCi -i-} : {CVCi |i|-} } or, more simply, {CVCi -i- : CVCi -|i|-}. Similarly, cvjnh†nm ‘observe’ is ˇ -a- : CVC ˇ -|i|-}. Included in the last {CVCi -e- : CVCi -|i|-} and lth;ƒnm ‘hold’ {CVC group are cnjz´nm ‘stand’, ,jz´nmcz ‘fear’, and their derivatives, which have a stem ending in [j] (though the [j] is absorbed before [í]); despite stress, the imperative lacks the characteristic -∫: cnj´q (despite cnj÷), yt ,j´qcz (1sg ,j÷cm). In verbs of the type {CVCi -i- : CVCi -|i|-}, the consonant was also followed by ∗ j in the past passive participle: -ghj´ity. In verbs in ∗ˇe, Cj is etymologically incorrect in the passive participle j,∫;ty ‘insulted’; the original Ci is preserved in ed∫lty ‘seen’ and in archaic ghtn†hgty, now usually ghtn†hgkty ‘endured’. The passive participle in this class of verbs thus has the suffix {-on-} (unstressed [ìn], [ïn]). The conjugations of representative verbs are given in Table 3.4. There are three accentual types. (a) Stress falls consistently on the root in past and present; the

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102 A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 3.4 i-Conjugation

inf prs 1sg prs 2sg prs 3sg prs 1pl prs 2pl prs 3pl prs pcl prs dee imv 2sg imv 2pl pst msc pst fem pst nt pst pl pst pcl pst dee psv

{CVC-i- : CVC-|i|}

{CVC-e- : CVC-|i|}

ˇ -a- : {CVC CVC-|i|}

{CVj-a- : CVj-|i|}

{R : R }

{F : T }

{F : A}

{F : T }

uhƒ,bnm uhƒ,k/ uhƒ,bim uhƒ,bn uhƒ,bv uhƒ,bnt uhƒ,zn uhƒ,zobq uhƒ,z uhƒ,m uhƒ,mnt uhƒ,bk uhƒ,bkf uhƒ,bkj uhƒ,bkb uhƒ,bdibq (j)uhƒ,bd (j)uhƒ,kty

ktn†nm ktxé ktn∫im ktn∫n ktn∫v ktn∫nt ktnz´n ktnz´obq ktnz´ ktn∫ ktn∫nt ktn†k ktn†kf ktn†kj ktn†kb ktn†dibq (e)ktn†d ---

lth;ƒnm lth;é l†h;bim l†h;bn l†h;bv l†h;bnt l†h;fn l†h;fobq l†h;f lth;∫ lth;∫nt lth;ƒk lth;ƒkf lth;ƒkj lth;ƒkb lth;ƒdibq (pf)lth;ƒd (pf)l†h;fy

cnjz´nm cnj÷ cnj∫im cnj∫n cnj∫v cnj∫nt cnjz´n cnjz´obq cnj´z cnj´q cnj´qnt cnjz´k cnjz´kf cnjz´kj cnjz´kb (yf) cnjz´dibq (yf)cnjz´d (yf)cnj´zy

‘rob’

‘fly’

‘hold’

‘stand’

pattern could be written as {R : R }, or more simply as {R : R }: uhƒ,bnm ‘bury’, uhƒ,k/, uhƒ,bim; d∫ltnm ‘see’, d∫;e, d∫lbim; ckßifnm ‘hear’, ckßie, ckßibim. (b) Stress falls consistently after the root -- on the suffix in the past and on 1sg {-ú} and 3pl {-ƒt} and thematic {-í-}, or {F : T}: ujdjh∫nm ‘speak’, ujdjh∫k, ujdjh∫kf; ujdjh÷, ujdjh∫im; pdty†nm ‘ring’, pdty†k, pdty†kf; pdty÷, pdty∫im; vjkxƒnm ‘be silent’, vjkxƒk, vjkxƒkf; vjkxé, vjkx∫im. (c) Stress falls on the suffix in the past and variably on the 1sg {-ú} but antethematically on the last syllable of the stem in the rest of the present, or {F : A}: k/,∫nm ‘love’, k/,∫k, k/,∫kf; k/,k÷, k÷,bim; cvjnh†nm ‘observe’, cvjnh†k, cvjnh†kf; cvjnh÷, cvj´nhbim; lth;ƒnm ‘hold’, lth;ƒk, lth;ƒkf, lth;é, l†h;bim. In the past passive participle, stress stays on the root if it is on the root in other forms: hfcckƒdkty ‘praised’, hfcckƒdktyf, hfcckƒdktyj, hfcckƒdktyysq; j,∫;ty ‘insulted’, j,∫;tyf, j,∫;tyj, j,∫;tyysq; eckßify ‘heard’, eckßifyf, eckßifyj, eckßifyysq. The combination of suffixal stress in the past with antedesinential stress in the present ({F : A}) gives stress on the syllable before the suffix in the passive: djpk/,∫nm ‘love’ (djpk/,k÷, djpk÷,bim),

Inflectional morphology 103

djpk÷,kty, djpk÷,ktyf, djpk÷,ktyj, djpk÷,ktyysq; elth;ƒnm ‘restrain’ (elth;é, el†h;bim), el†h;fy, el†h;fyf, el†h;fyj, el†h;fyysq; hfccvjnh†nm ‘examine’ (hfccvjnh÷, hfccvj´nhbim), hfccvj´nhty, hfccvj´nhtyf, hfccvj´nhtyj, hfccvj´nhtyysq. When stress in the present is thematic ({F : T }), the class {CVCi i- : CVCi -|i|-} keeps stress on the ending: jvhfx∫nm ‘darken’ (jvhfxé, jvhfx∫im), jvhfx=y, jvhfxtyƒ, jvhfxtyj´, jvhfx=yysq. The other two classes ({CVCi -e- : CVCi ˇ -a- : CVC ˇ -|i|-}) pull stress back to the syllable before the passive formant: |i|-}, {CVC ecbl†nm ‘sit through’ (ecb;é, ecbl∫im), ec∫;ty, ec∫;tyf, ec∫;tyj, ec∫;tyysq; jnkt;ƒnm ‘finish reclining’ (jnkt;∫, jnkt;∫im), jnk=;fy, jnk=;fyf, jnk=;fyj, jnk=;fyysq. In the {CVC-i- : CVC-|i|} type, there is a tendency to shift from thematic stress to antethematic stress in the present and past passive participle. Verbs differ. Some have just begun to shift: hfpuhjv∫nm ‘rout’, hfpuhjv∫im (∗ hfpuhj´vbim), hfpuhjvk=y (?hfpuhj´vkty). Other verbs have almost completed the shift: bccei∫nm ‘dry out’ bccéibim, current bccéity (older bccei∫im, bccei=y).

3.2.5 Conjugation classes: suffixed E-Conjugation e-Conjugation verbs, less uniform overall, vary in the extent to which they make use of a conjugational suffix. Some do. Others, termed asuffixal below, do not have a suffix, or have only a remnant of the conjugational suffix. Two of the classes maintain the suffix in both stems. These are the two most productive classes of Russian conjugation. One type has stems {CVC-a- : CVC-aj-|e|- }. Stress can be either consistently on the root or consistently on the suffix: {R : R} l†kfnm ‘do’, l†kfk, l†kf/, l†kftim; {F : F} ,hjcƒnm ‘throw’, ,hjcƒk, ,hjcƒ/, ,hjcƒtim. The passive participle has {-n-} added to the stem {CVC-a-}; stress is drawn off the {-a-} onto the previous syllable: hfp,hj´cfy ‘thrown around’, hfp,hj´cfyf, hfp,hj´cfyj, hfp,hj´cfyysq. A related type has the vowel {-e-} rather than {-a-} in the suffix: {CVC-e- : CVCej-|e|}. This type, which makes verbs from adjectives, has the same two stress options: {R : R} euh÷vtnm ‘grow sad’, euh÷vtk, euh÷vt/, euh÷vttim; {F : F} gmzy†nm ‘become intoxicated’, gmzy†k, gmzy†/, gmzy†tim. These are mostly intransitive and do not form passives. An exception is ghtjljk†nm ‘overcome’, whose participle is ghtjljk=y, ghtjljktyƒ, ghtjljktyj´, ghtjljk=yysq, which shows the 9 passive formant {-on ⁄ -}. Another, productive, group of suffixed e-Conjugation verbs has a stem {CVCova-} alternating with {CVC-uj-|e|-}. There are two stress options: root stress 9

The form and stress are innovative. Etymologically, the suffixal vowel derives from ∗ˇe, which did not undergo the change of ∗ e > o (witness ghtjljk†k).

104 A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 3.5 Representative conjugations: suffixed e-Conjugation

inf prs 1sg prs 2sg prs 3sg prs 1pl prs 2pl prs 3pl prs pcl prs dee imv 2sg imv 2pl pst msc pst fem pst nt pst pl pst pcl pst dee psv

{CVC-a-: CVC-aj-|e|}

{CVC-ova-: CVC-uj-|e|}

{CVC-a : CVCj -|e|}

{CVC-nu-: CVC-n-}

{CVC-a-: CVC-|e|}

{R : R }

{F : F }

{F : A}

{F : A}

{F : T }

l†kfnm l†kf/ l†kftim l†kftn l†kftv l†kftnt l†kf/n l†kf/obq l†kfz l†kfq l†kfqnt l†kfk l†kfkf l†kfkj l†kfkb l†kfdibq (c)l†kfd (c)l†kfy

rjkljdƒnm rjklé/ rjklétim rjklétn rjklétv rjklétnt rjklé/n rjklé/obq rjkléz rjkléq rjkléqnt rjkljdƒk rjkljdƒkf rjkljdƒkj rjkljdƒkb rjkljdƒdibq (pf)rjkljdƒd (pf)rjklj´dfy

gbcƒnm gbié g∫itim g∫itn g∫itv g∫itnt g∫ien g∫ieobq g∫if gbi∫ gbi∫nt gbcƒk gbcƒkf gbcƒkj gbcƒkb gbcƒdibq (j)gbcƒd (j)g∫cfy

nzyénm nzyé nz´ytim nz´ytn nz´ytv nz´ytnt nz´yen nz´yeobq [? nzyz´] nzy∫ nzy∫nt nzyék nzyékf nzyékj nzyékb nzyédibq (yf)nzyéd (yf)nz´yen

cjcƒnm cjcé cjc=im cjc=n cjc=v cjc=nt cjcén cjcéobq cjcz´ cjc∫ cjc∫nt cjcƒk cjcƒkf cjcƒkj cjcƒkb cjcƒdibq (j,)cjcƒd (j,)cj´cfy

‘do’

‘enchant’

‘write’

‘stretch’

‘suck’

{R : R}, as in nh†,jdfnm ‘demand’, nh†,jdfk, nh†,e/, nh†,etim, or consistent suffixal stress {F : F}, as in rjkljdƒnm ‘enchant’, rjkljdƒk, rjklé/, rjklétim. The passive has {-n-}, with stress on the syllable before {-a-}: yfhbcjdƒnm ‘sketch’, yfhbcj´dfy, yfhbcj´dfyf, yfhbcj´dfyj, yfhbcj´dfyysq, similarly hfcwtkjdƒnm ‘kiss’. In the two remaining classes of suffixal e-Conjugation, the suffix is reduced in the present. The type {CVC-nu- : CVC-n-} is used productively to make semelfactive (=singular occasion) perfectives of verbs that report intrinsically cyclical processes. These verbs have two stress patterns: {R : R} (,hßpyenm ‘spurt’, ,hßpyek, ,hßpye, ,hßpytim) or {F : T} (njkryénm ‘shove’, njkryék, njkryé, njkry=im). Some {-nu-} verbs are not semelfactive. They allow a third stress pattern: {F : A} nzyénm ‘pull’, nzyé, nz´ytim. The passive participle for {-nu-} verbs is {-t}, which forces stress off the suffix to the root: hfcnzyénm ‘stretch out’ (hfcnzyé, hfcnz´ytim), hfcnz´yenf, hfcnz´yenj, hfcnz´yensq; jnnjkryénm ‘shove away’ (jnnjkryé, jnnjkry=im), jnnj´kryenf, jnnj´kryenj, jnnj´kryensq. In the verbs in this class that are not semelfactive, the suffix {-nu-} may be absent in some forms of the past-infinitive system. The suffix is expected by

Inflectional morphology 105

the purely consonantal endings of the infinitive and the passive participle in {-t}: ljcn∫xm ∼ ljcn∫uyenm ‘reach’, ljcn∫uyen; jnd†huyenm ‘cast away’, jnd†huyen. ((J)cnßnm ‘grow cold’, however, by ending in a vowel, is more tolerant.) Active participles and the masculine singular past may lose the suffix: pst pcl ljcn∫uibq ∼ ljcn∫uyedibq, jnd†huibq ∼ jnd†huyedibq; msc ljcn∫u, jnd†huyek. The other pasttense forms are most likely to lose {-nu-}: ljcn∫ukf, jnd†hukb. Simplex forms are more likely to keep {-nu-} than prefixed forms. For example, v=hpyenm ‘freeze’, has variation in two forms (v=hp ∼ v=hpyek, v=hpibq ∼ v=hpyedibq), while its prefixed derivatives consistently lack the suffix {pf-, yf-, j,-, d-, gjl-, gtht-, bp-, ghb-, gj-, ghj-, c-, dß-}v=hp, v=hpibq. The development is towards increasing use of {-nu-} and regularizing this class of verbs. Occasionally the suffix even appears in the feminine of simplex forms, the context that usually omits {-nu-}: k∫gyekf for usual k∫gkf.10 Another class of suffixed e-Conjugation has a minimal suffix {-a-} in the pastinfinitive and no suffix in the present, while the consonant is modified and adopts the Cj grade: {CVC-a- : CVCj -|e|}. There are two stress options. One is consistent root stress {R : R}: gkƒrfnm ‘cry’, gkƒrfk, gkƒxe, gkƒxtim. The other is {F : A} -- suffixal in the past-infinitive and antethematic in the present: gbcƒnm ‘write’, gbcƒkf, gbié, g∫itim, implying yfg∫cfy. The past-infinitive stem of this group {CVC-a- : CVCj -|e|} is {CVC-a-}, which is the same as the past-infinitive of the productive group {CVC-a- : CVC-aj-|e|}. As a result, this type is being absorbed into the more productive group, at different rates depending on the final consonant of the stem. The old pattern is preserved well when the stem ends in a dental. Only one of the thirty-four verbs ending in a dental (twenty-six in stop, eight in fricative) shows variation; vtnƒnm ‘throw’, vtnƒk, vtxé ∼ vtnƒ/.11 Of the twenty-four verbs ending in velar, sixteen show some variation, the innovative variant vf[ƒtn ‘wave’ (for vƒitn) being used in the 1960s survey by 17 percent of speakers born in the decade 1940--49 (but only 3% on www.lib.ru ), ,hßpuftn ‘splash’ (for ,hßp;tn) by 32 percent for ,hßpufnm (18% on www.lib.ru). Of the eleven verbs ending in labials, eight use the innovative present in {CVP-aj-|e|}; the most advanced is rƒgfnm, which uses the new variant (rƒgftn ‘drip’ for rƒgktn) to the tune of 72 percent of speakers interviewed in the 1960s (82% on www.lib.ru). There is another very small group of verbs that has the same infinitive shape {CVC-a-}, but in the present uses no suffix and no consonant modification: {CVCa- : CVC-|e|}. Because the thematic vowel is added directly to the root-final consonant, the present of these verbs has an alternation of consonants in the present, 10 11

Il ina 1976. However, forms such as (ghb)kbgyek(f) are infrequent on the web. In the investigation from the 1960s reported in Krysin 1974.

106 A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 3.6 Quasisuffixed e-Conjugation

inf prs 1sg prs 2sg prs 3sg prs 1pl prs 2pl prs 3pl prs pcl prs dee imv 2sg imv 2pl pst msc pst fem pst nt pst pl pst pcl pst dee psv

{CVJa- : CVJ-|e|}

{CVJa- : CVJ-|e|}

{CCa- : CC-|e|}

{CCa- : CVC-|e|}

{CCa- : CVC-|e|}

{F : T }

{F : T }

{M : T }

{M : T }

{M : T }

lfdƒnm lf÷ lf=im lf=n lf=v lf=nt lf÷n lf÷obq lfdƒz lfdƒq lfdƒqnt lfdƒk lfdƒkf lfdƒkj lfdƒkb lfdƒdibq [? lfdƒd] ---

rktdƒnm rk/÷ rk/=im rk/=n rk/=v rk/=nt rk/÷n rk/÷obq rk/z´ rk÷q rk÷qnt rktdƒk rktdƒkf rktdƒkj rktdƒkb rktdƒdibq (pf)rktdƒd (pf)rk=dfy

hdƒnm hdé hd=im hd=n hd=v hd=nt hdén hdéobq [? hdz´] hd∫ hd∫nt hdƒk hdfkƒ hdƒkj hdƒkb hdƒdibq (jnj)hdƒd (jnj´)hdfy

,hƒnm ,thé ,th=im ,th=n ,th=v ,th=nt ,thén ,théobq ,thz´ ,th∫ ,th∫nt ,hƒk ,hfkƒ ,hƒkj ,hƒkb ,hƒdibq (yf),hƒd (yƒ),hfy

hdƒnmcz hdécm hd=imcz hd=ncz hd=vcz hd=ntcm hdéncz hdéobqcz [? hdz´cm] hd∫cm hd∫ntcm hdƒkcz hdfkƒcm hdfkj´cm hdfk∫cm hdƒdibqcz (pf)hdƒdibcm ---

‘give’

‘peck’

‘tear’

‘take’

‘strain’

C0 grade (absence of palatalization) in the first singular and third plural, Ci grade in the middle forms. Three stress patterns are found: {R : R} ;ƒ;lfnm ‘thirst for’, ;ƒ;lfk, ;ƒ;le, ;ƒ;ltim; {F : T } cjcƒnm ‘suck’, cjcƒk, cjcé, cjc=im; and {F : A} cnjyƒnm ‘moan’, cnjyƒk, cnjyé, cnj´ytim. In the passive participle, stress shifts back: j,cj´cfy ‘licked round’. A related subgroup is the small set of verbs in which the final consonant of the root is [j], and the suffix {-a-} disappears in the present; these verbs have root stress (c†znm ‘sow’) or thematic stress (cvtz´nmcz ‘laugh’, cvtz´kcz, cvt÷cm, cvt=imcz). Exceptionally, the imperative has no vowel: cv†qcz.

3.2.6 Conjugation classes: quasisuffixed E-Conjugation Some verbs of the e-Conjugation have the reflex of a suffix {-a-} in the pastinfinitive. The root without this vowel is phonologically minimal. Lfdƒnm ‘give’ and jcnfdƒnmcz ‘remain’ have present-tense stems in [j] without [v], except in the imperative and participles. Another class is that of rktdƒnm

Inflectional morphology 107

‘peck’, rk/÷, rk/=im; rjdƒnm ‘forge’, re÷, re=im; gktdƒnm ‘spit’, gk/÷, gk/=im, in which additionally [v] alternates with [j]. Stress is on the second syllable in the past-infinitive, thematic in the present ({F : F}). The passive has antethematic stress: (pf)rk=dfy. Although the first singular present is stressed, the imperative lacks -∫: gk÷q, céq, ;éq, rk÷q, réq. In some other classes the past-infinitive ends in {a}, but the preceding root is phonologically debilitated. The thematic ligature can be added directly to the cluster: ;lƒnm ‘wait’, ;lé, ;l=im, implying the formula {CCa- : CC-|e|-}. Like ;lƒnm are: hdƒnm ‘tear’, dhƒnm ‘lie’, ;hƒnm ‘devour’, chƒnm ‘defecate’, -ghƒnm ‘trample’, nrƒnm ‘weave’. In some verbs the cluster is broken up in the present tense by a vowel augment, as in ,hƒnm ‘take’, ,thé, ,th=im; lhƒnm ‘tear’, lthé, lth=im; pdƒnm ‘call’, pjdé, pjd=im, implying the formula {CCa- : CVC-|e|-}). In the present, stress always falls on the thematic vowel. In the past, stress is mobile: ;lƒnm ‘await’, ;lƒk, ;lfkƒ, ;lƒkb, ;lƒkj; ,hƒnm, ,hƒk, ,hfkƒ, ,hƒkb, ,hƒkj; hdƒnm, hdƒk, hdfkƒ, hdƒkb, hdƒkj; pdƒk, pdfkƒ, pdƒkb. When these verbs are made reflexive, stress becomes fixed on the ending (except in the masculine singular): hdƒkcz, hdfkƒcm, hdfkj´cm, hdfk∫cm. But this end stress has begun to yield to stem stress in an informal register: hdfkj´cm, hdfk∫cm > hdƒkjcm, hdƒkbcm.12 Gjghƒnm ‘flout’, with no augment in the present, has fixed root stress in the past. The passive participle, in {-n-}, puts stress on the syllable before the [a], and since the root is non-syllabic, stress ends up on the second or only vowel of the prefix: jnj´hdfy ‘torn off ’, jnj´hdfyf, jnj´hdfyj, jnj´hdfyysq; é,hfy ‘cleaned up’, é,hfyf, é,hfyj, é,hfyysq. Next comes a set of heterogeneous verbs that have a hyposyllabic stem {CV-} or {CCV-} in the past-infinitive. The present can have various shapes. The following subtypes can be distinguished. Corresponding to a past-infinitive stem {C(C)V-}, the present has the consonant followed by some vowel and [j]: dßnm ‘howl’, dßkb, dßkf, dj´/, dj´tim (also rhßnm ‘cover’, yßnm ‘moan’, hßnm ‘dig’, vßnm ‘wash’). Similar, except for differences in vocalism, are g†nm (gj÷) ‘sing’, lénm (lé/) ‘blow’, pyƒnm (pyƒ/) ‘know’, uh†nm (uh†/) ‘warm’, gjx∫nm (gjx∫/) ‘rest’, j,énm (j,é/) ‘shoe’, ,h∫nm (,h†/) ‘shave’. Stress in the past falls on the root vowel consistently: g†kf, g†kb. A second type uses an augment [v] in the present instead of [j]: ;∫nm, ;bdé ‘live’; ckßnm, cksdé ‘be reputed’; gkßnm, gksdé ‘swim’. Stress in the past is mobile: ;bkƒ, ;∫kb. Another subtype has the augment [j] added to the present tense but with no root vowel, or {CJ-|e|}. Stress in the present is thematic by default. The past has mobile stress: g∫nm ‘drink’, gm÷, gm=im, gbkƒ, g∫kb (also d∫nm ‘wind’, k∫nm ‘pour’), with the exception of ,∫nm ‘beat’ and i∫nm ‘sew’, whose past tenses are not mobile: ,m÷, ,m=im, ,∫kf, ,∫kb. 12

Strom 1988, SRIa 1.144.

108 A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 3.7(a) Asuffixal e-Conjugation

inf prs 1sg prs 2sg prs 3sg prs 1pl prs 2pl prs 3pl prs pcl prs dee imv 2sg imv 2pl pst msc pst fem pst nt pst pl pst pcl pst dee psv

{CV- : CVJ-|e|}

{CV- : CVJ-|e|}

{CV- : CVJ-|e|}

{CV- : CJ-|e|}

{F : T}

{F : T}

{M : T}

{M : T}

rhßnm rhj´/ rhj´tim rhj´tn rhj´tv rhj´tnt rhj´/n rhj´/obq rhj´z rhj´q rhj´qnt rhßk rhßkf rhßkj rhßkb rhßdibq (pf)rhßd (pf)rhßn

g†nm gj÷ gj=im gj=n gj=v gj=nt gj÷n gj÷obq --gj´q gj´qnt g†k g†kf g†kj g†kb g†dibq (c)g†d (c)g†n

;∫nm ;bdé ;bd=im ;bd=n ;bd=v ;bd=nt ;bdén ;bdéobq [? ;bdz´] ;bd∫ ;bd∫nt ;∫k ;bkƒ ;∫kj ;∫kb ;∫dibq (ghj);∫d (ghj);∫n

g∫nm gm÷ gm=im gm=n gm=v gm=nt gm÷n gm÷obq --g†q g†qnt g∫k gbkƒ g∫kj g∫kb g∫dibq (ghj)g∫d (ghj´)gbn

‘cover’

‘sing’

‘live’

‘drink’

Superficially similar are verbs which have the augment [n] in the present. There are two variants. In one, the nasal (originally an infix added to the present tense) appears after the root-final vowel and the present-tense thematic vowel is added to a fully syllabic root in {CVN-}; such are l†nm ‘put’, l†ye, l†ytim; cnƒnm ‘become’, cnƒye, cnƒytim. Stress is fixed on the root in the present and the past: l†nm, l†k, l†kf, l†kb; cnƒnm, cnƒk, cnƒkf, cnƒkb. In the other variant the nasal consonant appears in place of the vowel of the past-infinitive (reflecting the historical alternation of ∗ VN in position before vowels with a nasal vowel in position before consonants): ;ƒnm ‘reap’, ;yé, ;y=im; ;ƒnm ‘squeeze’, ;vé, ;v=im; (yf)xƒnm ‘begin’, (yf)xyé, (yf)xy=im; (jn)yz´nm ‘grasp, take’, (jn)ybvé, (jn)y∫vtim (substandard variant, (jn)své, (jn)ßvtim). Stress in the present is thematic, except -yz´nm. Stress in the past is either root (;ƒnm, ;ƒk, ;ƒkf, ;ƒkb, ;ƒkj) or mobile, even going onto the prefix (yfxƒnm, yƒxfk, yfxfkƒ, yƒxfkb). All of the verbs in these groups that have mobile stress in the past have fixed end stress in the reflexive counterparts of the verbs: yfxƒkcz (older yfxfkcz´), yfxfk∫cm, yfxfkj´cm, yfxfkƒcm. Rather different are: rjkj´nm ‘prick’, rjk÷, rj´ktim; vjkj´nm ‘grind’, vtk÷, v†ktim; ,jhj´nmcz ‘fight with’, ,jh÷cm, ,j´htimcz; gjhj´nm ‘lash’, gjh÷, gj´htim.

Inflectional morphology 109

Table 3.7(b) Asuffixal e-Conjugation

inf prs 1sg prs 2sg prs 3sg prs 1pl prs 2pl prs 3pl prs pcl prs dee imv 2sg imv 2pl pst msc pst fem pst nt pst pl pst pcl pst dee psv

{CV- : CVN-}

{CV- : CVN-}

{CVRV- : CVR-|e|}

{CVR(V)- : CVR-|e|}

{R : R }

{R : T }

{R : A }

{M : T }

l†nm l†ye l†ytim l†ytn l†ytv l†ytnt l†yen ----l†ym l†ymnt l†k l†kf l†kj l†kb l†dibq (hfp)l†d (hfp)l†n

;ƒnm ;vé ;v=im ;v=n ;v=v ;v=nt ;vén ;véobq [? ;vz´] ;v∫ ;v∫nt ;ƒk ;ƒkf ;ƒkj ;ƒkb ;ƒdibq (gj);ƒd (gj);ƒn

rjkj´nm rjk÷ rj´ktim rj´ktn rj´ktv rj´ktnt rj´k/n rj´k/obq rjkz´ rjk∫ rjk∫nt rjkj´k rjkj´kf rjkj´kj rjkj´kb (e)rjkj´dibq (e)rjkj´d (e)rj´kjn

nth†nm nhé nh=im nh=n nh=v nh=nt nhén nhéobq --nh∫ nh∫nt n=h nthkƒ n=hkj n=hkb (e)n=hibq (e)nth†d ∼ (e)n=hib (e)n=hn

‘place’

‘squeeze’

‘prick’

‘rub’

Stress is antethematic in the present, when the consonant adopts Cj grade even in the first-person singular. In the past-infinitive, stress is fixed on the second root syllable: rjkj´k, rjkj´kf, rjkj´kb. The two transitives rjkj´nm and vjkj´nm have retracted stress in passive participles: erj´kjn, erj´kjnf, erj´kjnj, erj´kjnsq. Vth†nm ‘die’, gth†nm ‘close’, nth†nm ‘wipe’ have a non-syllabic present stem (implying thematic stress by default): vhé, vh=im. Unusually for Russian conjugations, the past stem differs from the infinitive stem: gth†nm, g=h, gthkƒ, g=hkb, g=hkj; vth†nm, v=h, vthkƒ, v=hkb, v=hkj. Throughout these asuffixal verbs, the passive participle is generally marked by {-t-}. If the verb otherwise has root stress in the past, it has root stress in the passive participle: hfpl†nm ‘deck out’, hfpl†k, hfpl†kf, hfpl†n, hfpl†nf, hfpl†nj, hfpl†nsq; yf;ƒnm ‘squeeze’, yf;ƒk, yf;ƒkf, yf;ƒn, yf;ƒnf, yf;ƒnj, yf;ƒnsq; hfcnth†nm ‘wipe away’ (hfcn=h, hfcn=hkf), hfcn=hn, hfcn=hnf, hfcn=hnj, hfcn=hnsq; c,h∫nm ‘shave off ’ (c,h∫k, c,h∫kf), c,h∫n, c,h∫nf, c,h∫nj, c,h∫nsq; jng†nm ‘read the service over’ (jng†k, jng†kf), jng†n, jng†nf, jng†nj, jng†nsq; e,∫nm ‘kill’ (e,∫k, e,∫kf), e,∫n, e,∫nf, e,∫nj, e,∫nsq. For those asuffixal verbs that take {-t-}, mobile stress in the past once implied mobile stress in the participle: yfxƒnm ‘begin’ (yƒxfk, yfxfkƒ, yƒxfkj)

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Table 3.8 Consonant-stem e-Conjugation

inf prs 1sg prs 2sg prs 3sg prs 1pl prs 2pl prs 3pl prs pcl prs dee imv 2sg imv 2pl pst msc pst fem pst nt pst pl pst pcl pst dee psv

{CVC- : CVC-|e|}

{CVC- : CVC-|e|}

{CVC- : CC-|e|}

{CVC- : CVC-|e|}

{CVC- : CVC-|e|}

{E : T }

{R : T }

{E : T }

{R : R }

{E : T }

ytcn∫ ytcé ytc=im ytc=n ytc=v ytc=nt ytcén ytcéobq ytcz´ ytc∫ ytc∫nt y=c ytckƒ ytckj´ ytck∫ y=cibq (e)ytcz´ (e)ytc=y

rhƒcnm rhflé rhfl=im rhfl=n rhfl=v rhfl=nt rhflén rhfléobq rhfl∫ rhfl∫ rhfl∫nt rhƒk rhƒkf rhƒkj rhƒkb rhƒlibq (e)rhƒdib (e)rhƒlty

g†xm gtré gtx=im gtx=n gtx=v gtx=nt gtrén gtréobq --gtr∫ gtr∫nt g=r gtrkƒ gtrkj´ gtrk∫ g=ribq (bp)g=rib (bp)gtx=y

k†pnm k†pe k†ptim k†ptn k†ptv k†ptnt k†pen k†peobq k†pz k†pm k†pmnt k†p k†pkf k†pkj k†pkb k†pibq (pf)k†pib (yf)k†pty

,th†xmcz ,thtuécm ,tht;=imcz ,tht;=ncz ,tht;=vcz ,tht;=ntcz ,thtuéncz ,thtuéobqcz --,thtu∫cm ,thtu∫ntcm ,th=ucz ,thtukƒcm ,thtukj´cm ,thtuk∫cm ,th=uibqcz (e),th=uibcm ---

‘carry’

‘steal’

‘bake’

‘crawl’

‘protect’

yƒxfn, yfxfnƒ, yƒxfnj, yƒxfnsq; ghjrkz´cnm ‘curse’ (ghj´rkzk, ghjrkzkƒ, ghj´rkzkj), ghj´rkzn, ghjrkznƒ, ghj´rkznj, ghj´rkznsq; hfcg∫nm ‘drink a shared bottle’ (hfcg∫k, hfcgbkƒ, hfcg∫kj), hfcg∫n, hfcgbnƒ, hfcg∫nj, hfcg∫nsq; jn;∫nm ‘outlive one’s time’ (jn;∫k, jn;bkƒ, jn;∫kj), jn;∫n, jn;bnƒ, jn;∫nj, jn;∫nsq. These citations illustrate the point that, historically, mobile stress once meant that the stress retracted onto the prefix when it was not on the end (in the feminine). Stress on the prefix has been fading (manuals must be consulted for details), but it is still preserved in frequent verbs like yfxƒnm.13 Among asuffixal verbs, the largest and most homogeneous group are obstruent stems -- verbs like ytcn∫ whose stem ends in an obstruent in both subsystems. 13

To illustrate the nature of this variation using derivatives of gth†nm. The old pattern -- complete mobility in the past and the passive participle -- is preserved with pfgth†nm: pƒgth, pfgthkƒ, pƒgthkj, pƒgthn, pfgthnƒ, pƒgthnj, pƒgthnsq. In the middle, jgth†nm has eliminated prefixal stress, and has even begun to allow the feminine stress on the root: jg=h, jgthkƒ ∼ jg=hkf, jg=hkj; jg=hn, jgthnƒ ∼ jg=hnf, jg=hnj, jg=hnsq. Even further, gthtgth†nm has gone over to stem stress in both past and participle: gthtg=h, gthtg=hkf, gthtg=hkj; gthtg=hnf, gthtg=hnf, gthtg=hkj, gthtg=hnsq.

Inflectional morphology

In the present, the thematic ligature |e| is added directly to a stem of the shape {CVC- }. The final consonant is C0 in the first singular and third plural (ytcé, ytcén; gtré, gtrén) and Ci in the middle forms (ytc=im; gtx=im). The stem of the past tense also ends (or could end) in an obstruent, and that fact occasions some collision between the final consonant of the stem and the consonants of the past tense and the infinitive. The collision is resolved in different ways. (a) Verbs whose present stem ends in a D E N T A L S T O P lose the stop throughout the past, and have an infinitive in -cn∫: dtcn∫ ‘lead’ (dtlé, dtl=im, d=k, dtkƒ); vtcn∫ ‘sweep’ (vtné, vtn=im, v=k, vtkƒ); gktcn∫ ‘weave’ (gktné, gktn=im, gk=k, gktkƒ); uytcn∫ ‘oppress’ (uytné, [no past]); ,htcn∫ ‘wander’ (,htlé, ,htl=im, ,h=k, ,htkƒ); ,k/cn∫ ‘watch’ (,k/lé, ,k/l=im, ,k÷k, ,k/kƒ); uhzcn∫ ‘come’ (3sg uhzl=n, [no past]). (b) Verbs whose present stem ends in a L A B I A L S T O P keep the stop and lose the {-l-} in the masculine singular past, and have an infinitive in -cn∫: crhtcn∫ ‘scrape’ (crht,é, crht,=im, crh=,, crht,kƒ); uhtcn∫ ‘row’ (uht,é, uht,=im, uh=,, uht,kƒ). (c) Verbs ending in a V E L A R S T O P keep that consonant and lose the msc sg {-l-} of the past, and have an infinitive in --xm: dk†xm ‘draw’ (dktré, dktx=im, dk=r, dktrkƒ); n†xm ‘flow’ (ntré, ntx=im, n=r, ntrkƒ); (yf)h†xm ‘speak’ (-htré, -htx=im, -h=r, -htrkƒ); ghtyt,h†xm ‘ignore’ (ghtyt,htué, ghtyt,ht;=im, ghtyt,h=u, ghtyt,htukƒ); ,th†xm ‘take care of’ (,thtué, ,tht;=im, ,th=u, ,thtukƒ); cnth†xm ‘guard’ (cnthtué, cntht;=im, cnth=u, cnthtukƒ); njkj´xm ‘pound’ (njkré, njkx=im, njkj´r, njkrkƒ); (pf)ghz´xm ‘harness’ (pfghzué, pfghz;=im, pfghz´u, pfghzukƒ). (d) Verbs ending in a D E N T A L F R I C A T I V E keep that consonant and lose the msc sg {-l-} of the past, and have an infinitive -n∫ added to the fricative (a voiced fricative letter is kept in spelling): dtpn∫ ‘convey’ (dtpé, dtp=im, d=p, dtpkƒ); gjkpn∫ ‘crawl’ (gjkpé, gjkp=im, gj´kp, gjkpkƒ); nhzcn∫ ‘shake’ (nhzcé, nhzc=im, nhz´c, nhzckƒ); gfcn∫ ‘tend’ (gfcé, gfc=im, gƒc, gfckƒ). Hfcn∫ ‘grow’ (hfcné, hfcn=im, hj´c, hjckƒ) combines the loss of the dental stop and the loss of msc sg {-l-}. Exceptional vowel alternations reflecting old nasal infixes occur in k†xm ‘lie’ (kz´ue, kz´;tim, k=u, ktukƒ); c†cnm ‘sit’ (cz´le, cz´ltim, c†k, c†kf). (Ghj-)xtcnm ‘read’ (ghjxné, ghjxn=im, ghjx=k, ghjxkƒ) and ;†xm ‘burn’ (;ué, ;;=im, ;=u, ;ukƒ) have null grade and stress on endings in both the present and the past. In stress, the predominant pattern is {E : T}, or thematic stress in the present, end stress in the past (though not in the masculine singular). End stress in the past also implies the unusual end stress in the infinitive as well (ytcn∫), except in velar stems. Root or mobile stress in the past precludes end stress in the infinitive. Other stress patterns are possible, for individual verbs or small groups of verbs. Rkz´cnm ‘swear’ has {M : T}, or thematic stress in the present (rkzyé, rkzy=im) and mobile stress in the past (rkzkƒ, rkz´kb). C†cnm ‘sit’ (cz´le, c†kf), k†pnm ‘climb’ (k†pe, k†ptim, k†p, k†pkf), jnd†hpnm ‘open’ (archaic) have consistent

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root stress: {R : R}. (In recent times c†xm ‘hack’, originally {R : T}, has been shifting to the productive stress pattern in the past: c†r, c†rkf, c†rkb > c=r, ctrkƒ, ctrk∫.) For other verbs the stress pattern is {R : T }: uhßpnm ‘gnaw’ (uhspé, uhsp=im, uhßp, uhßpkf); rhƒcnm ‘steal’ (rhflé, rhfl=im, rhƒk, rhƒkf); rkƒcnm ‘place’ (rkflé, rkfl=im, rkƒk, rkƒkf); gƒcnm ‘fall’ (gflé, gfl=im, gƒk, gƒkf) and (j-)cnh∫xm ‘shear’ (jcnhbué, jcnhb;=im, jcnh∫u, jnch∫ukf). Ghz´cnm ‘spin’ has thematic stress in the present (ghzlé, ghzl=im) and variation in the past: like uhßpnm, stem stress (ghz´kf, implying reflexive ghz´kfcm, etc.) or, like rkz´cnm, mobile past (ghzkƒ, ghz´kj, implying end stress in the reflexives ghzkƒcm, ghzkj´cm). Vj´xm ‘be able, possible’ is a unique verb with {E : A}: vjué, vj´;tim, vjukƒ, vjuk∫. In obstruent stems with end stress in the past, the passive participle has the suffix {-on-}, with stress on the ending in the short forms (eytcn∫ ‘carry off ’, ey=c, eytckƒ, eytckj´ implies eytc=y, eytctyƒ, eytctyj´) and on the participial suffix in the long form (eytc=yysq). Stress stays on the root in the participle if the past is root-stressed: pfuhßpnm ‘chew up’, pfuhßpkf, pfuhßpty, pfuhßptyf, pfuhßptyj, pfuhßptyysq.

3.2.7 Stress in verbs: retrospective The stress of verbs has to be learned, class by class and, in the smaller, less productive, archaic classes, verb by verb. Yet some broad generalizations can be discerned. Verb classes can be divided into four large sets. The first set consists of verbs with a conjugational suffix that is syllabic in both the past-infinitive and the present. Verbs in these classes allow only two stress patterns: {R : R} (nh†,jdfnm, nh†,jdfk : nh†,e/, nh†,etim) and {F : F} (rjkljdƒnm, rjkljdƒk : rjklé/, rjklétim). This limitation suggests that roots and suffixes are heavy. If either the root or suffix receives stress, stress remains there in both subsystems. Furthermore, stress can never go further towards the end of the word than a syllabic suffix. The second set consists of verbs with an identifiable, syllabic suffix in the pastinfinitive, but no suffix, or a suffix that is not syllabic, in the present subsystem. There are three possibilities: {R : R}, {F : T}, {F : A}. The three patterns show again that, in the past-infinitive, stress cannot go further towards the ending beyond an overt and syllabic suffix. But in the present, where the suffix is missing (or lacks a vowel), it is possible to put stress on the syllable preceding the thematic vowel: {F : A}, 1sg gbié, 2sg g∫itim. That means that mobile stress in the present is possible only for those verb classes that lose the suffix in the present. The third set is the array of heterogeneous verbs that have no conjugational suffix and stem shapes that do not remain stable between the past-infinitive and present subsystems. Some of these verbs have {R : R} stress, like dßnm, dj´/, or

Inflectional morphology

{R : T} stress, a minor variant that occurs by default when the present stem lacks a vowel, such as i∫nm, i∫kf, i∫kb, im÷, im=im. Interestingly, these verbs with stems that are minimal (“hyposyllabic”) or inconsistent over the two subsystems allow mobile stress in the past (along with thematic stress in the present), or {M : T}: g∫nm, gbkƒ, g∫kb; ,hƒnm, ,hfkƒ, ,hƒkb (gm÷, gm=im; ,thé, ,th=im). In fact, mobile stress in the past occurs only with such verbs. The fourth group is the consonant-stem verbs like ytcn∫, g†xm, which have the same, stable, canonical root structure {CVC-} in both subsystems. These verbs have a variety of stress patterns, but the most frequent is {E : T}, or end stress in the past (y=c, ytckƒ, ytck∫) correlated with thematic stress in the present (ytcé, ytc=im). It is as if the stable structure requires stability in the placement of stress (rather than mobility) and the absence of an intervening suffix encourages the stress to go beyond the root out onto the endings. Thus, roots and suffixes are heavy and hold stress towards the front of the word. Absence of a suffix encourages stress after the stem. Mobility, in either past or present, is tolerated by those verb classes in which there is instability in the stem shape between the two subsystems. In the passive participle, root stress occurs when other forms have root stress. Mobile stress occurs if the participle is {-t-} and if the verb has mobile stress in the past: yƒxfn, yfxfnƒ, yƒxfnj. End stress occurs in some verb classes that add the suffix {-on-}, namely {CVC-i : CVC-|i|} and consonant stems ({CVC- : CVC-|e|}): hfpuhjvk=y, eytc=y, provided stress is thematic in the present. Otherwise, the productive stress pattern is stress on the syllable preceding the suffix: yfg∫cfy, jnj´hdfy, el†h;fy, hfccvj´nhty ‘examined’, jnk=;fy ‘rested’, yfnz´yen ‘stretched’, jnnj´kryen ‘pushed away’, erj´kjn ‘punctured’.

3.2.8 Irregularities in conjugation Irregularities and exceptions of conjugation are limited in Russian. The most archaic and irregular verbs are †cnm ‘eat’ and lƒnm ‘give’. The ancient athematic ending is preserved in the first-person singular, and the other two forms of the singular are unusual: †v, †im, †cn; lƒv, lƒim, lƒcn. The plural is built on a more recognizable stem. Lƒnm follows the i-Conjugation in the firstand second-person plural, but not in the third plural (lfl∫v, lfl∫nt, but lflén), while †cnm follows the i-Conjugation throughout the plural (tl∫v, tl∫nt, tlz´n). The past-tense forms are regular. {-k-}. The jer of these suffixes would have been lost in all forms except the masculine nominative singular, when the jer was vocalized. The synchronic result is that the masculine nominative singular of short adjectives takes fullgrade vocalism. The suffix {-k-} usually takes and leaves the consonant unaffected (C0 grade): épjr, rh†gjr (but uj´hmrbq ‘bitter’, uj´htr ). The suffix {-n-}, by virtue of its ∗ m, once palatalized the preceding consonant. The earlier Ci that resulted is still visible in, for example, msc sg short léhty ‘bad’, n=vty ‘dark’, or, under stress, ev=y. However, since all paired consonants except ∗ l have lost palatalization before the [n], the consonants are no longer palatalized in other forms (the restricted Ci
grade): lehyj´q, n=vysq, though [l˛] is maintained, l†kmysq ‘effective’. The small number of stems that ended in an etymological cluster CR have been under pressure to develop an anaptyctic vowel in the masculine singular short (nominative) form, when no vowel follows the cluster. Some develop full-grade vocalism: gj´kjy ‘full’, cd†ntk ‘light’, x=hty ‘dark’, [bn=h ‘clever’, while jcn=h ∼ j´cnh

126 A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 3.23 Stress in short-form adjectives

msc nt pl fem

{R}

{RM}

{M}

{M(E)}

{ME}

{(M)E}

{E}

e÷nysq ‘comfortable’

,éhysq ‘stormy’

kƒlysq ‘harmonious’

uhz´pysq ‘dirty’

rhƒcysq ‘beautiful’

cd†;bq ‘fresh’

évysq ‘intelligent’

e÷nty e÷nyj e÷nys e÷nyf

,éhty ,éhyj ,éhys ,éhyƒ

kƒlty kƒlyj kƒlys kflyƒ

uhz´pty uhz´pyj uhz´pys uhzpyƒ

rhƒcty rhƒcyj´ rhƒcyß rhfcyƒ

cd†; cdt;j´ cd†;∫ cdt;ƒ

ev=y evyj´ evyß evyƒ

{XY } = historically mixed type combining paradigm X and paradigm Y {(X)Y } = historically mixed type combining paradigm X and paradigm Y, contribution of X less prominent ƒ . . . ß (etc.) = alternate stresses

‘sharp’ and iecn=h ∼ iécnh ‘bright, sharp’ have variation. G=cnhsq ‘variegated’ maintains the cluster (g=cnh). Passive participles have a single [n] in short forms (eytc=y, eytctyƒ) but double [nn] in long forms (eytc=yysq). In certain adjectives there is a double consonant in long forms, which is retained in the short forms: ∫crhtyybq ‘genuine’, msc sg ∫crhtyty, fem sg ∫crhtyyf, nt sg ∫crhtyyt ∼ ∫crhtyyj, pl ∫crhtyyb ∼ ∫crhtyys; cfvjed†htyysq ‘self-confident’, fem cfvjed†htyyf, nt -tyyj, pl -tyys (though msc sg cfvjed†hty). Both consonants are kept if the adjective derives from a noun ending in [n]: hfpyjcnjhj´yybq ‘many-sided’, msc hfpyjcnjhj´yty, fem hfpyjcnjhj´yyz (cnjhjyƒ ‘side’). Most soft-stem adjectives are originally suffixed, like hfpyjcnjhj´yybq or lƒkmybq. They have a hard [n] in the masculine: ,tcrhƒty ‘limitless’ ( j in these historical Slavonicisms. Only three members of Declension have stems ending in paired soft consonants: gj´kt ‘field’, vj´ht ‘sea’, uj´ht ‘woe’, with overt genitive plural (gjk†q). Productive are event nouns in {-C ¸ -ij-}, whose locative singular is spelled ≤bb≥ and whose genitive plural is {-ij-º}, spelled ≤bq≥, such as nom sg plƒybt, loc sg plƒybb, gen pl plƒybq. A similar suffix is used to form abstracts or collectives that are not deverbal, such as vyjujk÷lmt ‘populousness’, gjlgj´kmt ‘underground’, rjgm= ‘lance’. With nouns of this shape, the genitive plural is usually {C ¸ -Vj-º}. The sequence is spelled ≤bq≥ if it is unstressed (eo†kmt ‘ravine’, gen pl eo†kbq), ≤tq≥ if it is stressed (gbnm= ‘drinking’, gen pl gbn†q). (Gen pl hé;tq, from he;m= ‘rifle’, is exceptional.) Although the null ending is the general rule for nouns of this declension, a dozen or so nouns of this shape use the genitive plural in 26

Vorontsova 1976 suggests that different lexical fields have different directions of development, though the differences are not profound. Use of {-º} declined slightly for ethnonyms, but increased slightly for fruits and vegetables (fgtkmc∫y from 26% to 39% -- with a peak of 42% in the next-to-youngest generation!) and paired items (yjc´or from 25% to 45%).

140 A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 3.32 Declension soft stem {-Cj-} {R

sg

soft stem {-ij-}

: R pl } {R

sg

hard stem

: R pl } {Esg : R pl }

nom sg acc sg gen sg dat sg loc sg ins sg nom pl acc pl

eo†kmt =nom eo†kmz eo†km/ eo†kmt eo†kmtv eo†kmz =nom

plƒybt =nom plƒybz plƒyb/ plƒybb plƒybtv plƒybz =nom

gen pl dat pl loc pl ins pl

eo†kbq eo†kmzv eo†kmz[ eo†kmzvb ‘gorge’

hard stem {R

sg

hard stem hard stem

: Epl (R nom )} {R sg : Epl } {Esg : Epl }

plƒybq plƒybzv plƒybz[ plƒybzvb

kbwj´ rhskmwj´ =nom =nom kbwƒ rhskmwƒ kbwé rhskmwé kbw† rhskmw† kbwj´v rhskmwj´v k∫wf rhßkmwf =nom ∼ =nom gen k∫w rhsk†w k∫wfv rhskmwƒv k∫wf[ rhskmwƒ[ k∫wfvb rhskmwƒvb

v†cn vtcnƒv vtcnƒ[ vtcnƒvb

ceotcndj´ =nom ceotcndƒ ceotcndé ceotcnd† ceotcndj´v ceotcndƒ =nom ∼ gen ceo†cnd ceotcndƒv ceotcndƒ[ ceotcndƒvb

‘building’

‘face’

‘place’

‘creature’

‘porch’

v†cnj =nom v†cnf v†cne v†cnt v†cnjv vtcnƒ =nom

{-ov} instead: nom sg écnmt ‘estuary’, gen pl écnmtd. The frequent noun gkƒnmt ‘dress’ belongs here (gen pl gkƒnmtd), as does jcnhb= ‘point’ (gen pl jcnhb=d). Some nouns have variation: nom sg gjlgj´kmt ‘cellar’, gen pl gjlgj´kmtd ∼ gjlgj´kbq; nom sg dth[j´dmt ‘upper reaches’, gen pl dth[j´dmtd ∼ dth[j´dbq. The overt genitive plural {-ov} occurs with nouns which use the collective {-j-} augment in the plural, such as gthj´ ‘feather’, nom pl g†hmz, gen pl g†hmtd, and also with j´,kfrj ‘cloud’ (nom pl j,kfrƒ, gen pl j,kfrj´d). The event nouns in {-C ¸ -ij-} have the locative spelled ≤bb≥, while the deverbals and collectives in {-C ¸ -j-} should have the locative spelled ≤mt≥. There was variation in the nineteenth century between ≤mb≥ and ≤m˜≥. The alternate spelling is still reflected in the idiom d gjkepf,snm∫ ‘in half-forgetfulness’. Diminutives in {-c-} have the expected nominative plural in {-a} but show variation in the genitive plural between {-ov} and {-º} (if the ending is {-º}, the consonant cluster is broken up with the full vowel ). Ten older nouns use only {-º}: nom sg ,k÷lwt ‘saucer’, nom pl ,k÷lwf, gen pl ,k÷ltw, also c†hlwt ‘heart’, gjkjn†ywt ‘towel’, p†hrfkmwt ‘mirror’, vßkmwt ‘soap’. And only {-º} (with full grade) is used for nouns with this suffix when the ending is stressed: nom sg ckjdwj´ ‘word’ nom pl ckjdwƒ, gen pl ckjd†w. Some two dozen younger derivatives use both {-º} and {-ov}: nom sg rjgßnwt ‘hoof ’, nom pl rjgßnwf, gen pl rjgßntw ∼ rjgßnwtd. The {-ov} ending is regular in ,jkj´nwt ‘swamp’, gen pl ,jkj´nwtd.

Inflectional morphology

Table 3.33 Declension

nom sg acc sg gen sg dat sg loc sg ins sg nom pl acc pl gen pl dat pl loc pl ins pl

soft stem

soft stem {-Vj-}

hard stem

hard stem

{R

{R

{Esg : R pl }

{Esg (R acc ): R pl }

sg

: R pl }

sg

: R pl }

ytl†kz ytl†k/ ytl†kb ytl†kt ytl†kt ytl†ktq ytl†kb =nom ytl†km ytl†kzv ytl†kz[ ytl†kzvb

k∫ybz k∫yb/ k∫ybb k∫ybb k∫ybb k∫ybtq k∫ybb =nom k∫ybq k∫ybzv k∫ybz[ k∫ybzvb

;tyƒ ;tyé ;tyß ;ty† ;ty† ;tyj´q ;=ys =gen ;=y ;=yfv ;=yf[ ;=yfvb

leiƒ léie lei∫ lei† lei† leij´q léib =nom léi léifv léif[ léifvb

‘week’

‘line’

‘wife’

‘soul’

The combination of nom pl {-i} and gen pl {-º}, characteristic of Declension , is found with nouns ending in a velar: nom sg d†rj ‘eyelid’, nom pl d†rb, gen pl d†r; nom sg z´,kjrj ‘apple’, nom pl z´,kjrb, gen pl z´,kjr; also nom sg gk†xj ‘shoulder’, nom pl gk†xb, gen pl gk†x. This combination of nom pl {-i} and gen pl {-º} occurs as a rule with certain gradated forms: ljv∫irj ‘house’, jrj´irj ‘window’, fh,épbot ‘melon’ (§3.6.8). Isolated is nom sg é[j ‘ear’, nom pl éib, gen pl ei†q (similarly, archaic j´rj ‘eye’, j´xb, jx†q). In Declension consistent root stress and consistent end stress are again statistically the most prominent, in part because suffixed derivatives fall into one or the other class: {R sg : R pl } ;∫ntkmcndj ‘residence’, {Esg : Epl } rjkljdcndj´ ‘sorcery’. Some high-frequency nouns fall into the two complementary patterns which oppose singular and plural by stress: {R sg : Epl } nom sg v†cnj ‘place’, nom pl vtcnƒ and {Esg : R pl } nom sg kbwj´ ‘face’, nom pl k∫wf.

3.6.6 Declension Alone of the declensions, Declension (Table 3.33) distinguishes the nominative and accusative in the singular. This declension also merges the dative and the locative singular (but not the genitive singular). The accusative plural is merged with the nominative or genitive, by animacy, as in all paradigms. Again, hard and soft stems do not differ other than orthographically. With stems ending in {-Vj-}, the [j] is spelled by the following soft-vowel letter of the ending: k∫ybz ‘line’, pfn†z ‘trouble’, [dj´z ‘needles’, xtiez´ ‘fish scales’. The dative and

141

142 A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 3.33 (cont.)

nom sg acc sg gen sg dat sg loc sg ins sg nom pl acc pl gen pl dat pl loc pl ins pl

soft stem

hard stem

hard stem

hard stem

{R

{E

{Esg (R acc ): Epl (R nom )}

{Esg : Epl }

sg

: Epl (R nom )}

sg

: Epl (R nom )}

lj´kz lj´k/ lj´kb lj´kt lj´kt lj´ktq lj´kb =nom ljk†q ljkz´v ljkz´[ ljkz´vb

ue,ƒ ue,é ue,ß ue,† ue,† ue,j´q ué,s =nom ué, ue,ƒv ue,ƒ[ ue,ƒvb

ujhƒ uj´he ujhß ujh† ujh† ujhj´q uj´hs =nom uj´h ujhƒv ujhƒ[ ujhƒvb

gj[dfkƒ gj[dfké gj[dfkß gj[dfk† gj[dfk† gj[dfkj´q gj[dfkß =nom gj[dƒk gj[dfkƒv gj[dfkƒ[ gj[dfkƒvb

‘lot’

‘lip’

‘mountain’

‘praise’

locative singular is ≤bb≥ for stems in {-ij-}: dat=loc sg bcnj´hbb ‘history’ but dat=loc sg pfn†t. Before endings in {-i}, the [j] is not pronounced. In the plural, the nominative is universally {-i}, and the genitive is preferentially {-º}. For stems in {-Vj-}, the genitive plural is spelled with ≤q≥ (pfn†q, bcnj´hbq). The final paired consonant of soft-stem nouns normally remains palatalized, and is spelled ≤m≥: ytl†kz ‘week’, gen pl ytl†km; pfhz´ ‘dawn’, gen pl pj´hm. Nouns in {-Cj-} have a null ending with full grade inserted between the consonant and [j]. That vowel is spelled ≤t≥ under stress (cdby†q ‘swine’, cnfn†q ‘articles’) and ≤b≥. unstressed (gen pl uj´cnbq ‘guests’). The overt gen pl {-ej} is possible with certain soft-stem nouns: lz´lz ‘uncle’, gen pl lz´ltq; lj´kz ‘portion’, gen pl ljk†q; cntpz´ ‘way’, gen pl cntp†q. Sometimes {-ej} occurs alongside {-º}: ghjcnsyz´ ‘sheet’, gen pl ghjcnßym ∼ ghjcnsy†q; hfcn†hz ‘absent-minded person’, gen pl hfcn†hm ∼ hfcn†htq; vt;ƒ ‘boundary’, gen pl vt;†q ∼ v†;. The overt ending is also possible with some soft-stem nouns ending in a cluster: yjplhz´ ‘nostril’, yjplh†q, though other nouns use {-º} and an inserted vowel: rƒgkz ‘drop’, gen pl rƒgtkm; g†nkz ‘loop’, gen pl g†ntkm; ptvkz´ ‘land’, gen pl ptv†km. Nouns in {-Cn˛ -} insert a vowel with {-º} ending and, contrary to the general principle of maintaining palatalization, usually harden the consonant: g†cyz ‘song’, gen pl g†cty; ,ƒiyz ‘tower’, ,ƒity; cgƒkmyz ‘bedroom’, cgƒkty. This hardening in turn has exceptions: lth†dyz ‘village’ gen pl lthtd†ym; ,ƒhsiyz ‘gentryman’s daughter’, ,ƒhsitym. Declension has an interesting archaic stress paradigm, in which the stress retracted from the ending to the root in the accusative singular and nominative

Inflectional morphology 143

Table 3.34 Declensions

IIIa

IIIa

IIIa, animate, stem augment

IIIa

IIIb

IIIc

{R sg : R pl }

{R sg :Epl (R nom )}

{R sg :Epl (R nom )}

{Esg : Epl }

{R sg : Epl }

{Esg : Epl }

ntnhƒlm = nom ntnhƒlb ntnhƒlb ntnhƒlb ntnhƒlm/ ntnhƒlb = nom ntnhƒltq ntnhƒlzv ntnhƒlz[ ntnhƒlzvb

yj´djcnm = nom yj´djcnb yj´djcnb yj´djcnb yj´djcnm/ yj´djcnb = nom yjdjcn†q yjdjcnz´v yjdjcnz´[ yjdjcnz´vb

lj´xm = nom lj´xthb lj´xthb lj´xthb lj´xthm/ lj´xthb = gen ljxth†q ljxthz´v ljxthz´[ ljxthmv∫

k/,j´dm = nom k/,d∫ k/,d∫ k/,d∫ k/,j´dm/ k/,d∫ = nom k/,d†q k/,dz´v k/,dz´[ k/,dz´vb

dh†vz = nom dh†vtyb dh†vtyb dh†vtyb dh†vtytv dhtvtyƒ = nom dhtv=y dhtvtyƒv dhtvtyƒ[ dhtvtyƒvb

génm = nom gen∫ gen∫ gen∫ gen=v gen∫ = nom gen†q genz´v genz´[ genz´vb

‘notebook’

‘news item’

‘daughter’

‘love’

‘time’

‘journey’

plural, or {Esg (R acc ): R pl }, ujhƒ ‘mountain’. The pattern is unproductive, and it is moving in the direction of {Esg : R pl }, the pattern of ;tyƒ, ;=ys. Along the way, transitional stages have developed: stress can be regularized first in the accusative singular while the oblique plural remains stressed, as in {Esg Epl (R nom )}, nom sg ue,ƒ, acc sg ue,é (earlier ué,e), dat pl ue,ƒv, or the oblique plural adopts root stress leaving the stress on the stem in the accusative singular, as in {Esg (R acc ) : R pl }, nom sg leiƒ, acc sg léie, nom pl léib, dat pl léifv (earlier leiƒv). Different nouns have changed at different rates. Celm,ƒ ‘fate’ has almost completely gone over from {Esg : Epl (R nom )} to {Esg : R pl }, except for the archaic genitive plural cel†, (now célt,) and the idiom rfr∫vb celm,ƒvb (otherwise ins pl célm,fvb). Cnjhjyƒ ‘side’ is normatively {Esg (R acc ) : Epl (R nom )}, but warnings in manuals suggest the future may see both the elimination of the accusative singular stem stress (acc sg cnj´hjye > cnjhjyé) and end stress in the oblique plural (dat pl cnjhjyƒv > cnj´hjyfv). Htrƒ ‘river’ allows variation in both positions: acc sg htré ∼ h†re, dat pl htrƒv ∼ h†rfv.

3.6.7 Declension The three variants of Declension are characterized by the syncretic ending {-i} in genitive, dative, locative singular (see Table 3.34). Feminine Declension , relatively numerous, has nom sg {-º}, ins sg {-ju}, nom pl {-i}, and gen pl {-ej}.

144 A Reference Grammar of Russian

In Declension the consonant is an unpaired consonant (dj´im) or paired soft; w†hrjdm allows a hard stem in the oblique plural (wthrdƒv ∼ wthrdzv). A small number of nouns have null grade alternating with full grade: nom sg dj´im ‘louse’, gen=dat=loc sg di∫, ins sg dj´im/; w†hrjdm ‘church’, gen=dat=loc sg w†hrdb, ins sg w†hrjdm/. The two feminine nouns referring to people express animacy in the plural, but not in the singular: nom=acc sg vƒnm, acc=gen pl vfnth†q; nom=acc sg lj´xm, acc=gen pl ljxth†q. These nouns also preserve an archaic alternation in the shape of the stem. Stress patterns in Declension are limited. Most usual are {R sg : R pl } and {R sg : Epl (R nom )}. A dozen or so nouns have the stress pattern {R sg : Epl (R nom )}, with the proviso that, in the locative singular, stress shifts to the end to make loc2: nom sg j´cm, loc1 j´cb, loc2 jc∫. Pattern {Esg : Epl } is found with k/,j´dm and some other nouns. Génm, the lone masculine member of Declension , is genuine {Esg : Epl }. Certain numerals have the singular form of this stress (gz´nm, gen=dat=loc sg gzn∫), with no stress retraction in the instrumental (ins gznm÷). The normative accentuation of uhélm was originally {Esg : Epl (R nom )} with retraction in the instrumental singular (gen=dat=loc uhel∫, ins uhélm/) and alternation in the plural (nom pl uhélb, dat pl uhelz´v). The genitive and dative singular now show variation (uhél∫). In Declension almost universal is {R sg : Epl } (∫vz ‘name’, gen=dat=loc sg ∫vtyb, nom pl bvtyƒ, dat pl bvtyƒv). Only pyƒvz ‘banner’ differs, with stem stress in the singular (gen=dat=loc sg pyƒvtyb) and pre-desinential stress in the plural (nom pl pyfv=yf, dat pl pyfv=yfv). A handful of nouns of Declension still preserve the older instrumental ending {-m˛i} (spelled ≤mvb≥), though it is close to gone. According to normative recommendations, the old ending is preferred with kjiflmv∫ ‘horses’, ljxthmv∫ ‘daughters’, possible but not preferred with ldthmv∫ ‘doors’, archaic or limited to fixed phrases with ujhcnmv∫ ‘handfuls’, rktnmv∫ ‘containers’, (k†xm) rjcnmv∫ ‘lay down one’s bones’.27 The ending is still usual with ltnmv∫ ‘children’, k/lmv∫ ‘people’ (though these nouns are not usually included in Declension ). There are ten neuter nouns in Declension : ,h†vz ‘burden’, dh†vz ‘time’, dßvz ‘udder’, pyƒvz ‘banner’, ∫vz ‘name’, gk†vz ‘tribe’, gkƒvz ‘flame’, c†vz ‘seed’, cnh†vz ‘stirrup’, n†vz ‘crown [of head]’. Declension has a nominative singular which is spelled ≤z≥ (pronounced [ə]). The nominative (and accusative) singular uses a diminished stem without the {-Vn-} of other cases. Declension uses an instrumental {-em}, nominative plural {-a}, and genitive {-º}: ins sg ∫vtytv, nom pl bvtyƒ, gen pl bv=y. These are characteristics 27

Usage on the web () is consistent with the normative rules: kjiflmv∫ 99%, ljxthmv∫ 88%, ldthmv∫ 32%, ujhcnmv∫ 0.8%.

Inflectional morphology 145

of fellow neuters of Declension . The final consonant of the stem expansion in {-Vn-} is palatalized in the singular {-Vn˛ -} and unpalatalized in the plural {-Vn-}. Normally that vowel is unstressed; it becomes stressed only in the endingless genitive plural, when the end of the stem is normally {-m˛on-}: bv=y. Two nouns take gen pl {-m˛an-}: ctvz´y, cnhtvz´y. The archaic noun lbnz´ ‘child, offspring’ belongs in Declension , by virtue of merging the three oblique cases (lbnz´nb ); the instrumental is lbnz´ntq. The lone masculine génm ‘road’ follows Declension except in the instrumental singular.

3.6.8 Declension and gender of gradation As emerged from the earlier exposition, gender and declension class are largely stable and fixed. A given noun is assigned to one and only one declension class. With the exception of nouns referring to human beings, syntactic gender can be predicted from morphological gender. As a rule, Declension is masculine, Declension neuter, and Declension and Declension mostly feminine. In ordinary instances, diminutives are transparent; the derived noun is assigned to one of the three productive declensional patterns and maintains its ancestral gender -- the gender of the base noun. Thus the masculine suffix {-k-} and its expansions ({-ik-}, {-c‹ik-}, {-c‹k-}) take masculine nouns from Declension or Declension and assign them to Declension ; masculine gender is preserved. The corresponding feminine versions of these suffixes assign nouns from Declension and Declension to Declension , and the neuter versions assign nouns to Declension . The only problematic cases involve gradated derivatives. Pejorative diminutives of the type msc ljv∫irj ‘house’ and nt jrj´irj ‘window’ belong to Declension , though they have nom pl {-i}, more like Declension than Declension , with the expected gen pl ending {--º}: nom pl ljv∫irb, jrj´irb, gen pl ljv∫itr, jrj´itr. Phonetically, the final vowel of [dm˛íˇskə] could easily be construed as the nominative singular of Declension . And in fact, in less-than-standard register these nouns can take the singular oblique cases from Declension (gen sg ljv∫irb, dat sg=loc sg ljv∫irt, ins sg ljv∫irjq). The accusative is still ljv∫ire, not ljv∫irj. Another problematic declension is diminutives in {-in-(a)} from masculines (lj;l∫yf < lj´;lm ‘rain’, [jkjl∫yf < [j´kjl ‘cold’, ljv∫yf < lj´v ‘building’), which decline like members of Declension : nom sg ljv∫yf, acc sg ljv∫ye, gen sg ljv∫ys, dat sg=loc sg ljv∫yt, ins sg ljv∫yjq, nom pl ljv∫ys, gen pl ljv∫y. The syntactic gender for these nouns, however, vacillates between feminine, appropriate for Declension , and masculine, which is the ancestral gender. Both agreement variants are said to be stylistically neutral, hence both …nf ljv∫yf, which would be like a true feminine (though it contradicts

146 A Reference Grammar of Russian

the ancestral gender), and …njn ljv∫yf, which would be like a masculine member of Declension (though masculines in Declension are otherwise only animate). In the accusative, the feminine pattern prevails ([14]): [14]

Pfujy/ эne ljvbye (∗ эnjn ljvbye) pf 150 nsczxb ,frcjd b djpmve d Vjcrdt [jhjie/ rdfhnbhe. I’ll get rid of this house for 150 thousand bucks and get a good apartment in Moscow.

A third set of problems arises with the suffix {-is˛…-}. The feminine augmenta‹ tive assigns nouns to Declension , as in uhzp∫of < uhz´pm ‘dirt’, ,ƒ,bof < ,ƒ,f ‘old woman’. With neuter nouns, the derivative behaves like a standard member of Declension : ctk∫ot < ctkj´ ‘village’. What appears to be the same suffix can be applied to masculine nouns and yield neuter derivatives which have a metonymic meaning: njgj´h ‘ax’ > njgjh∫ot ‘ax handle’; rjcn=h ‘bonfire’ > rjcnh∫ot ‘site of bonfire’. This suffix also forms derivatives of verbal roots -e,†;bot ‘refuge’, ;bk∫ot ‘dwelling’. These derivatives are unproblematic neuter nouns with the endings characteristic of Declension : nom pl {-a} -- ctk∫of, rjcnh∫of, e,†;bof -- and gen pl {--º} -- ctk∫o, rjcnh∫o, e,†;bo. This suffix, applied to masculine (Declension ) nouns in the strictly augmentative sense, yields derivatives whose nominative singular would put them in Declension : lj´v > ljv∫ot ‘big house’, njgj´h > njgjh∫ot ‘big ax’, uj´hjl > ujhjl∫ot ‘big city’, fv,ƒh > fv,ƒhbot ‘big barn’. In the plural, these derivatives use gen pl {--º}, while the nominative plural varies between {-a} (from Declension ) and {-i} (from Declension ): ljv∫ot, nom pl ljv∫of ∼ ljv∫ob, gen pl ljv∫o; njgjh∫ot, nom pl njgjh∫of ∼ njgjh∫ob, gen pl njgjh∫o; ujhjl∫ot, nom pl ujhjl∫of ∼ ujhjl∫ob, gen pl ujhjl∫o. A minority of these nouns take {-i} exclusively: k,∫ot ‘forehead’, nom pl k,∫ob, gen pl k,∫o; cfgj;∫ot ‘boot’, nom pl cfgj;∫ob, gen pl cfgj;∫o. This is usual for animates: lhe;∫ot ‘friend’, nom pl lhe;∫ob, gen pl lhe;∫o; gfhy∫ot ‘fellow’, nom pl gfhy∫ob, gen pl gfhy∫o; djkx∫ot ‘wolf ’, nom pl djkx∫ob, gen pl djkx∫o. The patterns of nominative plurals can be summarized in tabular form (Table 3.35). Animate augmentatives like djkx∫ot can adopt the morphology of Declension in the less-than-standard register. Use of the genitive {-i}, dative and locative {-e}, and instrumental {-oj} (orthographic ≤-tq≥) is substandard, but use of the accusative in {-u} is only less literary: nfrj´uj djkx∫oe (Njkmrj xnj dbltkf pljhjdtyyjuj nfrjuj djkxboe ‘I just saw such a healthy wolf ’), which is analogous to vjtuj´ lz´l/. In general, these derived forms are subject to two pressures. On the one hand, they should inherit the gender of the ancestral noun. On the other, the suffixes push the derivatives towards specific declension classes. From this tension results

Inflectional morphology 147

Table 3.35 Nominative plural of {-is˛…-e} ‹ gender msc animate msc inanimate msc inanimate msc nt ---

semantic type > > > > > >

msc ,sx∫ot msc k,∫ot msc ujhjl∫ot nt njgjh∫ot nt jry∫ot nt e,t;∫ot

augmentative augmentative augmentative metonymic augmentative abstract deverbal

nom pl {-i} {-i} {-i} ∼ {-a} {-a} {-a} {-a}

an unstable declension affiliation. It is interesting that the accusative singular in {-u} stands out; it is the most characteristic feature of feminine nouns of Declension .

3.6.9 Accentual paradigms Nouns have six patterns of accentuation, which are available to all declensions, but are attested with different numbers of nouns in different declensions (Table 3.36). If the stress patterns and declension classes are arranged in a particular order, some generalizations about stress paradigms and declension classes emerge.28 Those patterns in Table 3.36 in which stress falls consistently in the same place in both singular and plural, either root {R sg : R pl } or ending {Esg : Epl }, are evidently the most frequent patterns, and occur with the largest number of declension classes. Restricted are patterns in which there is a shift within one number, such as a shift between the nominative plural and the oblique plural, {R sg : Epl (R nom )} and {Esg : Epl (R nom )}. (The pattern in which there is alternation within the singular is the most archaic and restricted pattern of all.) Intermediate are alternations between the whole singular paradigm and the whole plural paradigm, the pattern {R sg : Epl } and its converse {Esg : R pl }. If Table 3.36 is viewed from the perspective of the declension classes, we observe that Declension , at one end, basically holds stress on the root; it allows only limited end stress, when stress shifts to the end in the oblique plural ({R sg : Epl (R nom )}). At the opposite end of the spectrum, Declension has shifting stress only when stress is basically on the end in the singular (archaic {Esg (R acc ): Epl (R nom )} or newer {Esg : Epl (R nom )}). Declension is the most tolerant of end stress and of variable stress. Declension and Declension are intermediate, with Declension more similar to Declension and Declension more similar to Declension . 28

Following Brown et al. 1996.

148 A Reference Grammar of Russian

Table 3.36 Accentual preferences of nominal declensions

{R sg : R pl } {R sg : Epl (R nom )} {R sg : Epl } {Esg : Epl } {Esg : R pl } {Esg : Epl (R nom )}

Declension √ √

Declension √

Declension √

Declension √

± ± √

∗ ± √

∗ ∗ √

∗ ∗

± ∗

± ±

∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

√

= frequent ± = viable but somewhat restricted ∗ = very restricted, (almost) non-extant

The particular hierarchy of declensions seen in Table 3.36 -- whether accidentally or not -- matches another hierarchy, the preference for null ending in the genitive plural. Declension allows an overt genitive plural only in the rarest of circumstances, Declension a bit more frequently (an overt ending is a regular option for the class of derivatives in {-c-}); Declension strongly prefers an overt ending, but allows {--º} in certain lexical fields. Declension always has an overt ending.

3.7 Complications in declension 3.7.1 Indeclinable common nouns Some nouns, especially foreign borrowings, do not inflect; they have one form regardless of the case--number in which the noun is used.29 (Native nouns that are in effect quotes are not declined: iƒ ‘name of the letter ≤i≥’, z´ ‘self, ego’, yt-nhj´ym-vtyz´ ‘name of a flower’.) Whether a borrowing can be declined and what gender it has depends on how well it matches existing Russian patterns. If a noun ends in a consonant, it is declined as a masculine noun of Declension . Declined are then: ,jvj´yl ‘beau-monde’, htq[cnƒu ‘Reichstag’, akƒu ‘flag’, fyukjaj´, ‘Anglophobe’, vfcinƒ, ‘extent’ (< German Maβ stab), ljyrb[j´n ‘Don Quixote’, ujnntynj´n ‘Hottentot’, rehj´hn ‘Kurort’, gfyƒi ‘panache’. However, v∫cc ‘miss’ and vflƒv ‘madam’ are not declined because there is a mismatch between the feminine referential gender and the phonological shape, which looks like Declension . If a borrowing fits the pattern of Declension , it will be declined as a feminine member of Declension : cbh†yf ‘siren’, vjh†yf ‘moraine’, k†vvf ‘lemma’, kƒvf ‘llama’, lbk†vvf ‘dilemma’, cn/fhl†ccf 29

Muchnik 1963, Kaliniewicz 1978:43--52, Wojtowicz 1984:84--93.

Inflectional morphology 149

‘stewardess’, f,cw∫ccf ‘abscissa’, gƒepf ‘pause’, vtlépf ‘jellyfish’. Common are nouns with the shape {-Vj-a}: D†yuhbz ‘Hungary’, Uƒv,bz ‘Gambia’, Zgj´ybz ‘Japan’. Nouns ending in {-a} preceded by a vowel do not decline: ,jƒ ‘boa’, r†xef ‘Quechua’, gfneƒ ‘patois’. Nouns ending in stressed {-ƒ} do not decline: yeuƒ ‘nougat’, fynhfiƒ ‘entrechat’. Nouns ending in {-o} match the shape of neuters in Declension but do not decline: hƒlbj ‘radio’, rh†lj ‘creed’, kb,∫lj ‘libido’, lbyƒvj ‘dynamo’. The familiar words gfkmnj´ ‘coat’ and vtnhj´ ‘underground’ are not declined in standard Russian (Vfzrjdcrbq dsitk yf cwtye d gfkmnj b ikzgt ‘Mayakovsky came out onto the stage in a coat and hat’), but are occasionally declined in the informal register; thus, d gfkmnt appeared 150 xx out of 13,350 xx, or just 1 percent, on the web . Borrowings ending in other vowels violate Russian mores and are not declined: d∫crb ‘whiskey’, hƒkkb ‘rally’, nfrc∫ ‘taxi’, ∫uke ‘igloo’, ,b;é ‘bijoux’, hj´ylj ‘rondo’, abƒcrj ‘fiasco’, kb,h†nnj ‘libretto’, vty÷ ‘menu’, bynthdm÷ ‘interview’, ,br∫yb ‘bikini’, ltdfyƒufhb ‘Devanagari’, rfa† ‘caf†’, ijcc† ‘highway’, эrcgjp† ‘expos†’. The gender of an indeclinable foreign noun is determined first by animacy:30 if a noun refers to animate sexed beings, its syntactic gender is its referential gender, either masculine ([15]) or feminine ([16]): [15] [16]

Ibvgfypt c,t;fk bp pjjgfhrf, xnj,s dsgbnm gbdf. The chimpanzee fled the zoo in order to drink some beer. ≤Pyfrb≥, rjnjhsvb gjkmpjdfkfcm ibvgfypt Ejij xthtp 22 vtczwf gjckt yfxfkf j,extybz “Signs” that the chimpanzee Washoe used 22 months after beginning training

Similar to ibvgfyp† are l∫yuj ‘dingo’, rj´kkb ‘collie’, fkmgfrƒ ‘alpaca’. For some nouns the syntactic gender is the referential gender of typical usage: nj´hb ‘Tory’, fnnfi† ‘attach†’, …ve ‘emu’, uyé ‘gnu’, uh∫pkb ‘grizzly’, gj´yb ‘pony’ are masculine, while ahƒe ‘Frau’, vèwwj-cjghƒyj ‘mezzo-soprano’, k†lb ‘lady’ are feminine. Indeclinable nouns that do not refer to animate beings are generally neuter. All the indeclinable words ending in unusual vowels fit here (nf,é ‘taboo’, etc.). There are few exceptions to this rule. Two common nouns, rj´at ‘coffee’ and d∫crb ‘whiskey’, are exclusively masculine in contemporary Russian (Ult regbnm [jhjibq rjat d pthyf[? ‘Where can one buy good coffee in beans?’). For some nouns, especially proper nouns, the gender in Russian is the gender of the Russian word that names the category to which the entity belongs. By this logic ,tyuƒkb and péke are masculine, each being a zpßr ‘language’; v∫yb 30

Corbett 1982.

150 A Reference Grammar of Russian

‘miniskirt’, as a kind of ÷,rf ‘skirt’, is feminine. Nj´rbj and N,∫kbcb are masculine like uj´hjl ‘city’. Rjkjhƒlj can be feminine, if it is the htrƒ ‘river’ ([17]), or masculine, if it is the inƒn ‘state’ ([18]): [17] [18]

Gjl ybv nzyekcz Rfymjy, gj rjnjhjve ntrkf Rjkjhflj. Underneath stretched the Grand Canyon, along which flowed the Colorado.